Ten banks can return TARP funds

WASHINGTON, June 9 (UPI) -- The U.S. Treasury Department said 10 large financial firms were strong enough to return billions of dollars of emergency bailout funds to the government.

The firms, including American Express, Capital One Financial, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, were expected to return $68.3 billion of the federal aid doled out through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Treasury said Morgan Stanley could return its TARP funding, even though it was ordered to raise $1.8 billion to increase its capital cushion when the Treasury released details of its bank stress tests a month ago.

Twenty-two smaller banks have already returned $1.9 billion to the government. Some of assets of 10 bigger banks, however, are still covered by warrants worth about $4.6 billion, which keeps those assets under government control for the time being.

"These repayments are an encouraging sign of financial repair, but we still have work to do," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a department release.

With aid tarnishing the industry's image, restrictions on executive compensation and a total of $1.8 billion in annual interest payments, "there isn't a bank chief executive officer … that didn't want to get out as fast as they can," investment banker Brian Sterling at Sandler O'Neill told the Times.