MetLife: Financial Winners & Losers

Financial stocks brought in some gains on Wednesday.
By Maria Woehr ,

NEW YORK(

TheStreet

) -- Even though the broader market was sluggish on Wednesday as politicians argued over tax cuts, financial stocks brought in some gains.

The

Financial Select Sector SPDR

(XLF) - Get Report

was up 13 cents in afternoon trading.

Life insurers were big winners Wednesday after the Standard & Poor's raised its outlook for the insurance industry in 2011.

Lincoln National Corp.

(LNC) - Get Report

was up $1.83 at $27.17.

Metlife

(MET) - Get Report

was up $1.52 at $42.68 and

Prudential

(PRU) - Get Report

was up $1.45 at $55.09.

MasterCard

(MA) - Get Report

shares were up $1.57 at $248.35 even though its

website was down on Wednesday morning,

one day after the payments firm said it was disassociating its network from the controversial WikiLeaks.

SunTrust Bank

(STI) - Get Report

shares were up 92 cents, to $26.43, on news that new stress tests will determine how soon SunTrust Bank

repay TARP.

Losers of the day included

KKR Financial Holdings

(KFN)

, a unit of the private equity firm. The stock sank 39 cents a share to $9.10 on news it will sell at least 18 million shares in a

public offering.

Citigroup

(C) - Get Report

shares also struggled to keep in the green at $4.61 on news of the U.S. Treasury Department's sale of the remaining 2.4 billion shares. Citi Chairman Richard Parsons told

CNBC

that the bank was still too-big-to-fail, even after the government bailout. Those banks working on underwriting the government's sale of the Citi stake including

Morgan Stanley

(MS) - Get Report

are expected

to collect $42.3 million

in fees from Citigroup.

--Written by Maria Woehr in New York.

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Maria Woehr

.

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