New York, Mar 21 (EFE).- The shares of the punished American bank First Republic soared more than 23% this morning, during electronic operations prior to the opening of Wall Street, after several days of deep falls as a result of the storm that has intensified over American and European banks.
An hour and a half before the Wall Street bell tolled, First Republic shares were up 23.89%, after yesterday they had sunk another 40%.
This rebound coincides with a speech by the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, in which she assured that the authorities are willing to guarantee the deposits of other banks in trouble, as they already did with the ill-fated Silicon Valley and Signature, which were intervened by the Government two weeks ago.
“The steps we took were not focused on helping specific banks or types of banks. Our intervention was necessary to protect the general US banking system (…). And similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions experience massive deposit withdrawals that present a risk of contagion,” Yellen said.
A dozen large US banks came to the rescue of First Republic last week and injected 30,000 million dollars. However, this move did not convince its clients and investors and its shares continued to free fall.
Yesterday, it was revealed that the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is leading a new round of talks with other large US banks to try to stabilize the battered institution.
The rise of First Republic coincides with a general revaluation of the country’s regional banking titles and the stock fund that brings together entities in the sector, the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF, rose 4.27% this morning.
