Strong demand for Lloyds bond swap

Lloyds Banking Group's £21bn fundraising got off to a good start today, with the part-nationalised lender's offer to swap existing debt for contingent capital encountering "strong investor demand".Offers to exchange £12.51bn of existing securities were received, of which £8.78bn have been accepted, said the bank.Earlier this month, the UK's third-largest lender said it was raising £21bn from a £13.5bn rights issue and £7.5bn swap of existing debt for contingent capital. The bond financing, later increased by £1.5bn due to high demand, counts towards core tier one capital and convert into equity in the event of a "stress scenario", such as Lloyds' core tier one ratio falling below 5%.An aggregate amount of £1.48bn of exchange consideration will be issued in the form of new shares or cash, and Lloyds says it will swap £6.99bn of Enhanced Capital Notes (ECN) under its non-US exchange offer.It has also increased the maximum ECN, or CoCos (contingent convertible core Tier 1 securities), it will issue as part of the US exchange offer from $800m to $986m.The government is taking up its rights as part of the rights issue, investing £5.7bn net of an underwriting fee to keep its stake in Lloyds at 43%. A price for the fully underwritten record cash call will be announced tomorrow.