Bankers, waiting anxiously to hear from the U.S. government on how exactly they can repay Troubled Asset Relief Program money, are trying to gauge what the conditions will be.

Regulators have made clear that banks need to submit a capital plan when they apply for repayment. But they have not said how much capital they expected bankers to raise, if any, to replenish the investment they pay back.

Some capital raises may be needed to repay investments banks received through TARP. After all, the government doesn't want banks to curtail lending during the recession because they paid back TARP funds.

BB&T Corp. (BBT) has taken a very direct path, replacing the $3.1 billion it received from TARP in full with other funds, including new common stocks and bonds. "Our request for approval has been submitted," said Christopher Henson, BB&T's chief operating officer.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK), too, has its capital ducks in a row to replenish TARP funds, and is among a list of banks big and small eager to get the government money off their balance sheets. Several small banks have already returned at least $570 million of their TARP investments to the government, but none of the stress tested banks have been told yet whether they can do so.

Four banks announced common share offerings Monday and cited TARP repayment as one reason for raising capital. In addition to BB&T and Bank of New York, Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) and U.S. Bancorp (USB) went to market; all four were told they do not need more capital or common equity following the Federal Reserve Board's recent stress test.

American Express Co. (AXP) said immediately after the stress test results were disclosed that it filed a request to pay back TARP. Goldman Sachs (GS) would not say whether it filed its request, but it did raise $5.75 billion in equity this week - it had received $10 billion from the government.

Capital One and U.S. Bancorp have also raised about half of their respective TARP monies. Capital One did a $1.75 billion stock offering, U.S. Bancorp raised $2.5 billion in equity and $1.5 billion in debt.

When TARP was amended with the Capital Purchase Program last year, it came with a provision that to repay the money, banks needed to raise capital equal to the cash they got. That provision was later dropped, but "bankers need to show regulators strong capital" in part because "the government has a strong bias against (banks) repaying TARP," said Kip A. Weissman, a partner with law firm Luse Gorman Pomerenk & Schick PC. "It's a badge of honor these days to raise capital," he said.

The capital plan of BB&T consists of a $1.5 billion stock offering Monday, $800 million in debt already raised earlier, and $725 million in savings from cutting its dividend.

In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, BB&T's Henson said, "If you go through the trouble to go through a capital plan, which you are required to submit for repayment, then what you'd want, and certainly what the regulators would expect, is that you have a better quality capital structure."

Henson said BB&T raised capital to remain strong through the recession and keep lending "aggressively." He said the bank made $2 billion in loans in the first quarter, and would have made the exact same amount of loans had it never received TARP.

Bank of New York Mellon Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Kelly told investors Wednesday during the UBS AG Global Financial Services Conference in New York that TARP might hamper rather than help banks.

Initially, business and institutional clients (particularly abroad) "saw TARP as being a huge competitive advantage" for Bank of New York Mellon, he said. "It really helped us pick up some business."

But that sentiment "changed radically over the past two or three months and it's now a negative to have TARP."

Bank of New York has in place a mix of new equity and debt and a dividend cut to replenish the $3.3 billion it got under TARP.

"I think we have everything in place now to allow us to" repay, Kelly said.

-By Matthias Rieker, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5936; matthias.rieker@dowjones.com