Some U.S. financial firms selling bonds without help

By John Parry

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a sign that the two-year-old global credit crisis may be on its way to easing, a growing list of U.S. financial institutions are now able to sell their own bonds without government backing, as two debt issues underscored on Wednesday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co, which bond analysts view as one of the big U.S. banks that may ultimately be able to operate independently of the government, sold a $2.5 billion issue of five-year notes.

"It is a signal the credit markets are in the process of repairing themselves," said Sean Simko, a fixed-income portfolio manager with investment management company SEI in Oaks, Pennsylvania.

"Any time a financial institution that once had to rely heavily on a government guarantee can come to market without it, (that) is a positive," he said.

Regulators have said selling debt with a five-year term or greater was a key condition of being permitted to repay funds from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Also on Wednesday, credit card company American Express Co sold $3 billion of non-guaranteed senior unsecured notes.

In addition to JPMorgan, other banks that have sold non-guaranteed debt in recent weeks include Bank of New York Mellon, BB&T Corp Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust Corp.

However, because banks can borrow much more cheaply when their debt issues are government-guaranteed, bond analysts expect that issuance of this type may continue rising steeply in the months ahead from the roughly $300 billion of this debt that U.S. financial institutions have issued since November.