NEW YORK: Ten of the largest US banks said on Wednesday (local time) they repaid more than $68 billion of taxpayer bailout funds, as they race to extract themselves from government restrictions on pay for top executives.

Banks are returning money taken from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was once intended to spur lending but is now viewed as a sign that recipients are too weak to survive on their own. In most cases, the banks issued preferred shares that carried 5 percent dividends in exchange for the money.

JPMorgan Chase & Co said it repaid $25 billion to TARP, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley said they repaid $10 billion each.