GM Bondholders Unite group says new offer "lopsided"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The latest bond exchange offer from General Motors Corp "sends a chilling message to all individual bondholders," GM Bondholders Unite, a grass-roots organization representing individual GM creditors, said on Thursday.

"The 'offer' to individual GM bond investors is ridiculously lopsided because it arbitrarily favors other groups, at the expense of the legal rights, under the U.S. Constitution, of hundreds of thousands of individual GM bond investors," the group said in a statement on its website.

GM earlier on Thursday said it had reached a deal with major bondholders that would give them a bigger stake in a reorganized and effectively nationalized automaker and could pave the way for a fast-track bankruptcy by GM within days.

Those large institutional bondholders were offered 10 percent of a reorganized company and warrants to acquire another 15 percent of the equity in the new GM, provided they support a quick U.S. Treasury-backed sale process.

"We aren't asking for a bailout or a handout, just a fair deal," the statement said. "So we have no plans to back down."

A separate group of Main Street bondholders also rejected the new GM offer, citing unfairness in giving unions estimated five times more dollar value per claim than the small bondholders.

The Main Street group said its bondholders intend to seek separate official committee status.

(Reporting by Walden Siew; Editing by Dan Grebler)