PacWest Bancorp reported a drop in deposits and Western Alliance Bancorp said its deposits grew, with investors continuing to scrutinize the levels amid tumult in the regional-banking industry.
(Bloomberg) — PacWest Bancorp reported a drop in deposits and Western Alliance Bancorp said its deposits grew, with investors continuing to scrutinize the levels amid tumult in the regional-banking industry.
Beverly Hills-based PacWest said in a regulatory filing Thursday that deposits fell 9.5% last week after Bloomberg News reported that the lender was in talks with potential investors. The bank didn’t specify its total deposit levels after the decline, but said it had total deposits of $28.2 billion as of March 31, and that it had immediately available liquidity of $15 billion as of May 10, exceeding uninsured deposits of $5.2 billion. Hours after the Bloomberg report last week, PacWest confirmed it was in talks with several potential investors.
PacWest said Thursday that it increased the number of customers enrolled in a so-called reciprocal-deposit program. Such programs — run by intermediaries with names like IntraFi — allow lenders to place customers’ funds that are in excess of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s protection limits with other lenders. In return, PacWest should receive a matching amount of deposits from the other banks in the network. The company also said it’s been offering promotional rates on deposit products to attract funds.
Western Alliance, meanwhile, said deposits increased by $600 million to $49.4 billion for the week through Tuesday. The Phoenix-based bank ended the first quarter with $47.6 billion of deposits.
Western Alliance shares were little changed at $26.99 at 10:54 a.m. in New York after rising earlier in the trading day, and are down almost 55% this year. PacWest shares slumped 23% to $4.70, and have plunged 74% this year.
“While PACW’s deposit update this morning points to a negative impact on deposits, WAL provided a better deposit update with quarter-to-date deposit growth even stronger than their last update,” Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts led by Christopher McGratty said in a note to clients. “To us, this is an important distinction,” they wrote, and is showing up in each bank’s stock performance.
The shares of both companies have taken a beating amid turmoil in the regional-banking industry sparked by a string of deposit runs that toppled three of the largest US lenders. The latest lender to fail, First Republic Bank, was seized by regulators and sold last week, sparking renewed concerns about the financial health of regional banks.
–With assistance from Jenny Surane.
(Updates with details on PacWest deposit composition in third paragraph, analyst comment in sixth.)
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