Huntington raising $675M to build cushion - Business First of Columbus:

http://terfherzzarre.wordpress.com/
The bank late Wednesday said it wouldraised $350 million from issuing common $75 million from selling preferred securities and $250 millionh from balance sheet adjustments and the adoption of new accountint standards. The initiative is in addition toa 38.5 million-shar sale this month, which raised nearly $120 million for Huntington CEO Stephen Steinour said earliere in the month that the Columbud bank had no plans to increase its capita l levels, but inquiries by investors coupled with continuedx economic uncertainty prompted Huntington to take the “We’ve been getting inquiries reflecting demancd for our stock, which we didn’t anticipate,” Steinourd said in an interview with Columbus Business First.
“Whty not take advantage of the demand, addresa uncertainties in the economy and, oh, by the way, with capitapl that is in excess of what we need we can use it torepag TARP.” Most of the capital-raising actions are targeted to occuf in the second quarter, the company said. Huntington doesn’t have a timetable for payinv backthe $1.4 billion it took from the government’w Troubled Asset Relief Program, but raisingy they money will better prepared it to eventually repay the money, Steinour said.
To come up with a projectioh forthe bank’s potential capital needs, Huntingto applied the stress test methodology that the government used on the nation’ 19 largest banks to its own books. The bank expecte the initiative will raise its Tier 1 commohcapital ratio, a key measure, to 7.4 percent from 5.94 Capital kept on hand by banks provides a buffer againstt losses in assets such as loans. In its stressw test of big banks, which didn’t include the government asked the institutions to keep enougyh of a capital cushion to help them withstansd deepereconomic troubles.
Though the requiremen isn’t an established standard for all industry analysts think regulators will apply it tosmaller banks.