Stress test results boost CDSs on financials

In early US trading on Friday, the cost of credit protection on financial institutions fell markedly following yesterday's publication of stress test results by the US government. In contrast to earlier pessimistic predictions - some of which had estimated the capital shortfall would amount to hundreds of billions of US dollars - the results indicated 10 US banks need to raise a total of $74.6 billion.

Five-year senior credit default swap (CDS) spreads referencing Bank of America (BoA) - which according to the stress tests requires an additional $33.9 billion of capital - tightened from 208.2 basis points at Thursday's close to 180.7bp as of 14:00pm BST on Friday, according to data provided by credit information specialist CMA Datavision. Spreads on BoA reached a high of 400.7bp on March 3.

Citi - which will require a further $5.5 billion in capital - saw its CDSs narrow to 344.1bp from 394.3bp

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