LONDON - Barclays said on Friday that investors had bought 94.6 percent of the shares the British bank was selling as part of a rights issue.
The remaining shares would be sold to new investors through the group of banks that is managing the rights issue, Barclays said. The bank raised £5.6 billion, or $9 billion, by selling 94.6 percent of the rights issue, or three billion shares at 1.85 pounds a share.
The price represents a 40 percent discount to Barclays’ share price the day before the offer and investors could buy one new share for every four shares they already owned.
Barclays said in July that it would raise new capital following pressure from the British financial regulator to improve the bank’s leverage ratio, a measure of how much borrowed money it uses. In addition to the rights issue, the bank also said that it would issue up to £2 billion of so-called contingent capital â€" financial instruments that convert to equity if a bank’s capital falls below a certain threshold.
Antony Jenkins, Barclays chief executive, is seeking to add to Barclays’ financial strength and to leave behind a series of legal woes. The bank reached a $450 million settlement with American and British authorities last year over the manipulation of benchmark interest rates and Mr. Jenkins has pledged to change the bank’s culture that he described to have been “too aggressive and too short-term.â€
Barclays’ rights issue came less than a month after the sale of shares in another large British bank. Britain’s government sold 6 percent of Lloyds Banking Group last month, raising £3.2 billion. It was the first time the government sold shares in the bank, which it bailed out during the financial crisis and in which it continues to hold a 33 percent stake.
Barclays shares fell Friday morning in London but then recovered and were up 0.2 percent midday. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citigroup managed the share sale.
