The US stress results which were announced few weeks back, had asked the weak US banks to raise around 75 billion US dollars as fresh capital from the market (and not from the government), to bridge the capital shortfall in their balance sheets.
Within three weeks of getting the report, almost eight of these weak banks have raised over 55 billion dollars of fresh capital from the market by issuing new securities. These banks have time till August 2009 to raise the capital, but they are taking no chances by delaying the capital raising.
It is important to note that liquidity and confidence has returned back to the US stock and money markets in the last two months, and that has helped these banks to raise 55 billion dollars easily through fresh shares.
Raising the remaining 20 billion dollars should be a cake walk, as the markets have firmed up further.
It would be prudent for these banks to raise extra capital beyond what the stress-results mandated, because the core problem of high US jobless rate, weak property prices and trillion dollar US government deficit remains.
There are also reports that the stress-test results in their original form indicated over 100 billion dollars capital shortfall, which was subsequently toned down , based on improving financial market conditions.