WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Treasury Department announced Thursday that it has sold about 1.1 billion additional shares of Citigroup /quotes/comstock/13*!c/quotes/nls/c (
C 3.76, +0.03, +0.80%) common stock. The government has now sold roughly 2.6 billion Citigroup shares, or about a third of the total 7.7 billion shares received in return for taxpayer assistance for the troubled bank. The average price per share of all the sales to date was $4.03, meaning the government has received total gross proceeds of $10.5 billion. Treasury has exchanged Citi preferred shares for common shares at a price of $3.25 per share. In a statement, Treasury said it currently owns 5.1 billion Citigroup shares and expects to continue selling the stake in an "orderly fashion" once the blackout period set by Citigroup related to its second quarter earnings release ends.