Shares in these five regional banks tumbled Monday despite Biden’s assurances

A number of regional banks saw their share prices tumble Monday after the fall of Silicon Valley Bank last week shook investor confidence in mid-sized banks.

Shares in San Francisco-based First Republic Bank fell by over 60 percent on Monday, while Western Alliance Bancorp, headquartered in Phoenix dropped by over 47 percent, two of the worst-performing banks of the day.

New York-based Metropolitan Bank slid by nearly 44 percent, PacWest Bancorp in Los Angeles fell by over 21 percent and the Memphis-based First Horizon fell by over 20 percent.

First Republic Bank, with assets totaling over $212 billion, plummeted despite trying to ensure customers on Sunday that its position was “very strong.”

“First Republic’s capital and liquidity positions are very strong, and its capital remains well above the regulatory threshold for well-capitalized banks,” the bank’s leadership said in a statement Sunday, announcing it was accessing additional funds through JPMorgan Chase and the Federal Reserve.

Western Alliance Bancorp, with total assets of over $67 billion, said in a statement Monday that deposit outflows had been “moderate,” and that it had strengthened its ability to meet customers’ needs by increasing its borrowing capacity.

“As of this morning, cash reserves exceed $25 billion and are growing, while deposit outflows have been moderate,” the bank’s CEO Kenneth Vecchione said in a statement.

PacWest Bancorp said over the weekend it was a “well-performing, well-diversified, full-service commercial bank.” It said it had $1.9 billion in cash, with other lines of liquidity and credit available.

The slide from the regional mid-sized banks comes after the historic fall of Silicon Valley Bank last week. Federal regulators took over the firm after depositors flocked to pull their funds from the bank, following an announcement from executives that they needed to raise billions in funding to secure their books. 

Experts feared that the fall of Silicon Valley Bank could shake investor and consumer confidence in regional banks, and compel depositors deciding to pull their money from the mid-sized institutions and putting it into seemingly safer Wall Street banks that are “too big to fail.”

Federal officials tried to alleviate that anxiety by backstopping all of the uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, using an insurance fund with over $100 billion in reserves to finance the safety net. The move by federal officials goes above and beyond the federal insurance issued by the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation of up to $250,000 per depositor.

Despite those measures, the shares for many regional banks slipped. The KBW Bank Index, which tracks 24 leading banks, tumbled 11 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. And more than 100 of the 124 US banks with a market value of $5B or less were in the red on Monday, per the Financial Times.

The White House and federal officials tried to downplay the threat of a broader crisis as a result of the bank’s failure.

Major stock prices, though, held steady, likely due to a perception amongst investors that the Federal Reserve will hold off on its imminent hikes of interest this month, after the previous jumps in rates have been attributed as one of the reasons that Silicon Valley Bank failed.