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Fed to test six U.S. banks for Euro stress

Addison Ray

Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:00pm EST

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve plans to stress test six large U.S. banks against a hypothetical market shock, including a deterioration of the European debt crisis.

The Fed said it will publish next year the results of the tests for six banks with large trading operations: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo.

The Fed said its global market shock test for those banks will be generally based on price and rate movements that occurred in the second half of 2008, and also on "potential sharp market price movements in European sovereign and financial sectors."

The heightened stress tests are part of a larger supervisory test the Fed will conduct on the capital plans of 19 firms with at least $50 billion in assets, including those six large banks.

In addition, the Fed will conduct a scaled-back test on the capital plans of 12 more financial firms considered less complex.

The Fed's review of those plans will determine whether the banks are robust enough to raise dividends or repurchase stock, or whether they need to raise additional capital.

The banks must submit their capital plans by January 9, 2012. The Fed said that it plans to respond to banks by March 15.

The Fed is putting in place a broad stress testing regime in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis when taxpayers were forced to extend a $700 billion bailout to the financial system.

This will be the second round of Fed tests of banks' capital plans.

Earlier this year, the Fed rejected Bank of America's plan to boost its dividend in the second half of 2011, while allowing other big banks to move ahead with dividend hikes.

The Fed on Tuesday said it will release the results of the stress test to "foster market discipline."

It said it will disclose the estimate of revenues, losses and capital ratios of the 19 biggest banks if they were to suffer a market shock.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski and Dave Clarke, editing by Bernard Orr and Tim Dobbyn)



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