NEW YORK - General Motors Co. may sell preferred stock alongside its initial public offering of common shares, reported Reuters based on a draft of its regulatory filing and two people briefed on the plan.

GM would get proceeds from the preferred offering and will not sell shares itself in the common offering, according to the draft and the people, who declined to be identified because the filing hasn't been publicly released.

The automaker, 61 percent owned by the government, will seek to raise $12 billion to $16 billion in the IPO, a person familiar with the plan said last week. The U.S. Treasury will sell some of the shares it holds in the company, the people said.

The offering, which may be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today, would be the second-largest in U.S. history, behind Visa Inc.'s $19.7 billion IPO in March 2008. Outgoing CEO Ed Whitacre has pushed to end government ownership of the company, which received a $50 billion taxpayer bailout following its bankruptcy in June 2009.

“They can hopefully generate enough funds to help operations,” said James Bell, executive market analyst at Kelley Blue Book in Irvine, Calif. “But the more important issue for them is to reduce the government's position, in terms of the company's public image.”

The preferred shares were added to attract hedge funds and other new investors because the shares have attributes of both debt and equity, the people familiar with the plans said.

Randy Arickx, a GM spokesman, declined to comment, as did Mark Paustenbach, a spokesman for the Treasury.