: First Republic stock slide continues but PacWest rallies

First Republic Bank stock FRC continued its steep drop on Wednesday after losing nearly half its value in the previous session, while PacWest Bancorp PACW is rallying after it disclosed a rise in deposits with its first-quarter results. First Republic fell 17% to $6.62 a share, a fresh all-time low, on heavy volume of 2 million shares, while PacWest moved up by 10.7%. The Financial Times and other publications reported efforts behind the scenes to come up with a solution to backstop First Republic again after injecting $30 billion in deposits into the lender last month. CNBC reported that banks are mulling a bond purchase from First Republic at a loss of a few billion dollars to keep the bank afloat. If First Republic fails, banks would have to repay the $30 billion in deposits that would be covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. First Republic faced doubts about its viability on Tuesday as analysts sifted through a difficult first-quarter update.

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