LONDON: Barclays completed its £5.8bn ($9.4bn) fundraising yesterday to meet a capital shortfall identified by its regulator, after almost 95 percent of the British bank’s investors stumped up more cash.
Barclays launched its rights issue three weeks ago, prompted by the British regulator’s demand that it improve its leverage ratio — a measure of its capital to assets — to three percent by mid-2014.
Barclays said bookrunners for the offer sold the shares that were not taken up by investors — worth £463m — at 268 pence apiece, or a 1.8 percent discount to Thursday’s close. Barclays shares were down 0.1 percent at 272.8p by 1110 GMT, which dealers said was a resilient performance and reflected the modest size of the leftover shares.
The bank also plans to sell £2bn of bonds that convert into equity if the bank hits trouble and to shrink the balance sheet of its investment bank to help it meet its leverage ratio target.
“Post the rights issue the regulatory risks have been reduced but not eliminated,” said Mike Trippitt, analyst at Numis Securities, saying there could be “pressure to deleverage the business further”. The rights issue was the biggest by a British bank since 2009 and raised the equivalent of 15 percent of Barclays’ market value.
Antony Jenkins, who took over as chief executive a year ago, is trying to rebuild Barclays’ reputation after a string of scandals. He said the rights issue would deal “quickly and decisively” with the British regulator’s demands.
Investors have broadly welcomed his turnaround plan, although he still faces challenges to improve profitability and tackle a raft of legacy issues. The rights issue forced him to push back his target to deliver a return on equity above about 11.5 percent by a year to 2016.
A slowdown in income from selling bonds and interest rate products will hurt third quarter profits across the industry.
Reuters
