Reuters first to reveal list of banks approved to repay TARP

Reuters was first on June 9 with the critical list of large U.S. banks that had received Treasury approval to pay back federal bailout funds. While other outlets were running speculation-based reports of which banks would get the green light, Reuters was first with a comprehensive list of the 10 banks that will soon be free of heavy government oversight and restrictions on executive pay, dividend payments and share repurchases. The banks were identified as Northern Trust, BB&T, Morgan Stanley, State Street, JPMorgan Chase, US Bancorp, American Express, Capital One, Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York Mellon. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg were not able to match the full list until the banks themselves had all made announcements of their approvals.