the rout in regional banks picked up steam again on thursday morning with several stocks poised to open trading with sizeable losses pacwest sank 40 in premarket trading the slide began on wednesday evening following news that the los angelesbased bank was exploring strategic options including a potential sale shares of first horizon were under pressure after the lenders merger with td bank was called off other notable declines included a drop of more than 13 for western alliance and about 11 for zions bancorp the spdr sp regional banking etf kre was down 37 thursdays moves come less than a week after first republic was seized by regulators and sold at a discount to jpmorgan chase marking the the third failure of a regional bank since the start of march first republic had searched for weeks for a market solution to stabilize itself after massive deposit withdrawals in the first quarter but none materialized and regulators stepped in many regional banks saw deposit outflows in march around the collapse of silicon valley bank raising questions about the stability of their funding and the value of some assets on their books that were not marked to market expected regulatory changes have also clouded the longterm profit outlook for the group jpmorgan ceo jamie dimon and federal reserve chair jerome powell expressed optimism this week that the initial wave of bank failures has passed but the drops for the stocks show that investors still lack confidence