Financial Winners & Losers: Citi, Wells Fargo

Updated for stock-price movements and to include details on Bank of America's TARP payment.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Financial shares ended Wednesday's session mixed, with Bank of America(BAC) announcing about an hour before the market closed that it had fully reimbursed the government for the $45 billion in aid it had received amid its shot-gun merger with Merrill Lynch at the height of the financial crisis last year.

Shares of the Charlotte, N.C. megabank, which convened a board meeting Tuesday ostensibly to discuss its ongoing CEO search, closed Wednesday at $15.39, down two cents, after trading for much of the session in plus territory.

Meanwhile, Citigroup(C) and Wells Fargo(WFC) continued to measure, behind the scenes, just how to follow Bank of America's lead and remove themselves from the government's TARP dole.

U.S. equities ended Wednesday moderately higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained ground late in the session, ending the day up 51 points, while the S&P 500 added 4 points.

TARP headlines continued to scroll along the financial-news crawlers Tuesday. Citigroup has apparently faced a harsher taskmaster in the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, which, unlike the Treasury Department, have been pushing Citigroup to raise as much as $20 billion in capital -- the same amount it took in bailout aid -- before it can begin to pay back its TARP funds.

Citigroup shares closed Wednesday at $3.86, down 1.3%.

Shares of Wells Fargo(WFC), meanwhile, slipped 7 cents to $25.96. Like Citigroup, the bank is negotiating with the government over the best way to exit TARP, though its CEO remained quiet on the matter Tuesday while in New York to give a speech at an investor conference.

Among the other megabank names Wednesday, shares of JPMorgan(JPM) ended the session at $41.19, down 2 cents.