Billions for Barclays
Barclays announced this morning that shareholders took up almost 20 per cent of new shares as it raised £4.5 billion to top up its coffers. I'm torn as to whether this is good news. Should we be worried that shareholders showed so little interest? Or should we rejoice that any of them took the shares at all – could this be a vote of confidence in the market for once?
Incidentally the three-and-a-bit billion pounds that was left over was snapped up by "anchor" investors in Qatar, Japan and elsewhere, no doubt re-kindling another debate – should we be happy that swarthy foreign types have such big stakes in key areas like this? Personally I think this is no big deal whatsoever – the cash is in the hands of a British bank when it might easily be somewhere else and that's good.
To misquote Keynes, if you owe Barclays £3.5 billion it has a problem, if it owes you £3.5 billion (as in this case) then you have a problem.
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Ian C
July 18th, 2008 12:08pmAnyone not buying their rights are worried by the doom - the darkest moment is the one before dawn. That momoment is the time to invest. The foreign funds are getting a steal and existing shareholders are allowing it.
William Norton
July 18th, 2008 5:04pmThe offer price was 282p per share. At the deadline for acceptance, the shares were trading at around 260-270p. They closed today a shade under 320p. The 20% who accepted probably did so as soon as they received the papers a few weeks back. The smart move was to buy in the market around noon on Wednesday when you could get them for 240p.
It's not dissimilar to the privatisation sale of BP stock at the time of the '87 Crash: the market dived just before the deadline and people bought elsewhere.