LONDON (Alliance News) - Barclays PLC Monday published the prospectus for its GBP5.8 billion rights issue and gave a trading update that showed a deterioration at its investment bank over the past couple of months.
Separately, Sky News City Editor Mark Kleinman reported that the bank could face a fine for a previous capital raising in 2008.
Barclays will issue 3,219,067,868 shares at 185 pence each. Each existing shareholder will be offered one share for every four existing shares they held at the close of trading September 13. The new shares will commence trading September 18, with the results of the rights issue to follow on October 4.
However, the bank's last significant capital raising, in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, could see Barclays incur a GBP50 million fine, according to Sky News City Editor Mark Kleinman, who cited one person familiar with the matter.
That capital raising, which attracted GBP11.8 billion from Qatari and other sovereign investors, is widely recognised as helping Barclays to escape the fate of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Lloyds Banking Group PLC, which had to be bailed out by the UK government. The capital raising is being investigated by UK and US regulators over whether Barclays should have disclosed more information to the stock market at the time.
Barclays also said its adjusted income for July and August was GBP500 million lower than in the same months of last year, and as a results was down 5% in the first eight months of the year. It blamed weaker profits from fixed income trading at its investment bank, although it said there has been a slight improvement in September so far.
Barclays announced the rights issue after UK rgulator the Prudential Regulation Authority found that Barclays had a GBP12.8 billion gap in its balance sheet.
Barclays shares were Monday quoted at 302.02 pence, up 0.42 pence, or 0.2%.
http://news.sky.com/story/1142257/barclays-braced-for-fine-over-qatar-deals
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
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