Commercial finance company CIT Group (CIT) announced today that it has received preliminary approval to receive $2.33 billion from the government’s $700 billion financial bailout fund.

CIT will receive the funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, which congress approved earlier this year, to help bolster the balance sheet of large banks and Wall Street investment banks.

The TARP money was originally intended to purchase mortgage-backed securities and other such related debt that was weighing down the balance sheets of financial institutions and furthering the credit crisis.

However, lots of different companies are lining up to get bailed out under the plan, with some non-bank financial companies actually converting into bank holding companies as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have done, or just smaller banks.

CIT also announced that its’ CIT Bank unit has been approved by the Commissioner of the Utah Department of Financial Institutions, to convert from a Utah-chartered industrial bank to a Utah-chartered bank.

The emergency loans to General Motors (GM) and Chrysler that President Bush announced last Friday, will come from the TARP money and according to Henry Paulson, the current Treasury Secretary, the disbursement to the auto companies, will wipe out the first half of the TARP money that was authorized by congress. To get access to the second $350 billion, the Whitehouse will have to “apply” to congress, to get access to the money.