(Rewrites first paragraph, adds comment, detail, background)
By Freya Berry
LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank hasbeen left holding a near 300 million-pound ($452 million) stakein a British theme park operator after failing to unload sharesacquired for a placement, the latest example of a bank retaininga block of stock it had been hired to sell.
The bank had been brought in this week by private equityfunds CVC and Blackstone to sell 15.44 percentof shares in Merlin, operator of attractions such asLegoland, but a regulatory statement on Friday showed it stillhad at least 7 percent of the company.
Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Secondary sales involve a bank helping a shareholder disposeof an unwanted stake and mean the bank takes on the risk of notbeing able to shift all the shares in question.
Such deals usually do not bring fees and are often done toboost a bank's position in investment banking league tables,whose positions confer important bragging rights in thecut-throat sector. But holding a valuable chunk of shares can beproblematic, even if they can be trickled into the marketwithout resulting in a loss.
"It's the worst part of investment banking," a London-basedECM banker said. "It is not what shareholders (of a bank) expectthem to be doing with equity capital."
Deutsche Bank has been involved in five placements thisweek, helping boost its European position to fourth as of Fridayfrom sixth as of Feb. 27, according to Thomson Reuters data. Itwas not clear how many of these deals had been fully placedsince market rules mean a shareholder only has to disclose astake above a certain level.
Deutsche also declined comment on these deals.
Earlier this week, UBS was forced to take on aportion of Abertis, following a 1.1 billion-euro ($1.2billion) sale by CVC of 7.5 percent of the company. UBS earlierdeclined to comment on the Abertis sale.
In 2013 Barclays ended up with a 14.2 percent stakein Dutch cable TV operator Ziggo worth around 697 million euros.Eventually Liberty Global purchased the stake.
Some leading banks have pushed for such deals not to beincluded in league tables. Other bankers see so-called agencydeals as the way forward, as two such deals, involving Ontex and Akbank, ran successfully this week.
In agency deals, bankers call investors directly to ask whatprice they think is fair, as opposed to running an auction wherebanks compete to offer the seller the best price before pluggingthe stock to investors.($1 = 0.9121 Euros)($1 = 0.6633 pounds) (Editing by Pamela Barbaglia and David Holmes)
Barclays (BARC)