The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s ownership in Ally Financial continues to shrink.

Treasury officials on Friday announced the completion of the first pre-defined written trading plan for Ally common stock. Treasury said it sold 8,890,000 shares and recovered approximately $218.7 million for taxpayers.

With the conclusion of the first trading plan, Treasury said it now holds 66.2 million shares of common stock, or approximately 13.8 percent, of Ally.

Treasury also announced that it would continue to sell Ally common stock through a second pre-defined written trading plan.

“Treasury’s sale of additional common stock continues our effort to wind down the investment in Ally and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP),” chief investment officer Charmian Uy said.  “The second trading plan will allow us to continue exiting the investment in a manner that balances speed of exit with maximizing the taxpayer’s return.”

Uy went on to explain Treasury’s second trading plan of Ally common stock (which also started on Friday) is part of its continuing effort to wind down TARP.  She calculated taxpayers have now recovered approximately $18.0 billion on the Ally investment, roughly $873 million more than the original $17.2 billion investment.

To date, Treasury computed that taxpayers have recovered a total of $440.0 billion on TARP investments, including the sale of Treasury’s AIG shares, compared to $425.2 billion disbursed

In closing their commentary on the latest moves connected with Ally, Treasury officials said, “There will be opportunities for smaller broker dealers, including women and minority-owned broker dealers, to participate in the sale of Treasury's remaining Ally common shares pursuant to the plan.

“This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any shares of Ally common stock,” they added.

The actions by Treasury come after Ally’s second-quarter performance that included net income of $323 million, or $0.54 per diluted common share, up from a net income figure of $227 million, or $0.33 per diluted common share, in the prior quarter, and a net loss of $927 million, or a loss of $2.73 per diluted common share, for the second quarter of 2013.