Big banks pass Fed 'stress tests'

The biggest US banks have enough capital to withstand a severe economic downturn, the Federal Reserve said overnight, with all but one passing the annual health check of the financial sector.

Banks' efforts to boost their capital since the 2007-2009 US financial crisis helped all 18 participating lenders except Ally Financial meet the minimum hurdle of a 5 per cent capital buffer in the Fed's "stress test."

The tests give regulators a view into how the banking sector would respond to a severe recession. The firms in the test represent more than 70 per cent of total bank holding company assets in the United States, a senior Fed official said.

"The nation's largest bank holding companies ... are collectively in a much stronger capital position than before the financial crisis," the Fed said in a statement.

Of the four largest US banks, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup saw improvements in their minimum Tier 1 common capital ratios, compared to last year's similar test. JPMorgan Chase held steady at 6.3 per cent.

Citigroup had the highest ratio of the top four at 8.3 per cent.

Two Wall Street banks, Morgan Stanley at 5.7 per cent and Goldman Sachs at 5.8 per cent, showed the two lowest outcomes above the 5 per cent threshold.

The two saw big losses related to trading positions and counterparty credit. The Fed only analyzed that specific risk for the six banks with large trading operations.

Stress testing has become a central part of US regulators' efforts to shore up the financial sector after the crisis. The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law called for the tests to ensure banks have big enough capital cushions to survive a severe recession or other market jolt.

Regulators also will use the tests to determine whether banks can start returning money to shareholders in the form of dividends or share buybacks.

Unlike last year, the Fed did not announce those results right away. The regulator's 2012 rejection of a dividend boost by Citigroup sent its shares tumbling.

To avoid a similar debacle, the Fed is giving banks 48 hours to tweak any capital plans they may have, before releasing decisions on those plans on March 14th.

But some bankers are worried that their stocks could still face volatile swings as analysts and investors try to guess how much capital banks will be able to return to shareholders over the next year.

Citigroup said yesterday it was not seeking an increase in its current quarterly dividend of one cent per share. It did ask to conduct a $1.2 billion common stock buyback program through March of 2014.

Other banks did not immediately announce their capital plans. The Fed gave the banks more information about the stress tests than was released publicly, but analysts said they did not expect banks to be surprised by the Fed's responses to their capital proposals.

Under the Fed's toughest stress scenario, which yielded the results disclosed last night, unemployment would spike to 12.1 per cent, equity prices would fall more than 50 per cent, housing prices would dip more than 20 per cent, and the largest trading firms would experience a sharp market shock.

The results showed that the 18 banks' aggregate capital gauge would hit a low of 7.4 per cent under the hypothetical stress scenario. That was much better than an actual 5.6 per cent at the end of 2008, the Fed said.

"The industry has clearly recovered," said Nancy Bush, a veteran bank analyst and contributing editor with SNL Financial. "But I don't think anybody is going to do anything heroic in terms of rewarding shareholders over the next couple of years, and I think we need to get ready for that reality."

At 1.5 percent, Ally Financial was the only bank to miss the 5 per cent target. The Fed's results included the assumption that Ally still bears liabilities from its mortgage unit, which filed for bankruptcy in May.

The US government owns a majority stake in Ally, the former General Motors lending arm, after a series of government bailouts.

Firms that come in below the 5 per cent minimum are not necessarily in danger of collapsing but must work with the Fed on a plan to bring capital back up to the standard, senior Fed officials said.

Ally said in a statement that the Fed's analysis was "inconsistent with historical experience in the most stressed periods in our business."

Agencies