Banks May Sell Debt After Good Earnings

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MarketWatch

January 20, 2010 Wednesday 10:32 AM EST

LENGTH: 179 words

HEADLINE: Banks may sell debt after good earnings

BYLINE: Deborah Levine

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — With the bulk of major U.S. banks having finished reporting their quarterly results, “we just may be about to see the ‘financials’ descend upon the market to raise capital at relatively attractive levels,” said Ken Jaques, credit and derivatives manager at Informa Global Markets. The amount of yield over Treasury rates that banks such as Goldman Sachs (gs) have to pay has shrunk dramatically from last year, Jaques said. Current spreads are even smaller than what banks paid on debt that was effectively guaranteed by the government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “With $78.592 billion already priced this month and another $7 billion expected to price today, there’s a distinct possibility that we could see another $100 billion-issuance month and maybe even more,” he said. Bank of America (bac) , Wells Fargo (wfc) and Morgan Stanley (ms) reported results Wednesday, following Citigroup (c) this week.

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