Buying back TARP warrants from Treasury could cost banks $5 billion

The ten banks cleared by regulators to buy back $68 billion in preferred stock investments they sold under the Treasury Department's rescue program aren't quite in the clear yet. They still have to settle on a price to repurchase hundreds of millions of warrants held by the government.

The warrants are important because they give the Treasury the right to buy huge chunks of the banks' common shares. And to be completely free of the additional oversight that comes with taking money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, they must be bought back. But the price tag may be massive -- as much as $5.1 billion, analysts say.