Barclays sinks as mystery seller offloads £900 million stake
Barclays shares fell Tuesday as a shareholder sold about £900 million ($1.2 billion) of stock, a day after the lender revealed a costly blunder in how it sold billions of dollars in securities.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. facilitated the book building process. A representative at Barclays declined to comment.
Large stake sales have started trickling in in recent days, with activity rebounding from a near clampdown on equity offerings due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Big holders including Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund have offloaded stakes in companies such as London Stock Exchange Group, Glencore and Gaztransport Et Technigaz.
The identity of the Barclays seller wasn’t disclosed. The British bank’s three largest shareholders are BlackRock, Vanguard Group and the Qatar Investment Authority, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Vanguard declined to comment, while the other firms didn’t respond to requests for comment.
QIA invested in Barclays in 2008, when the bank raised billions of dollars to avoid a U.K. government bailout. The sovereign wealth fund trimmed its stake in the British lender last year as the share price jumped more than 27%.
Barclays shares are down 17% so far this year.
On Monday, Barclays said that it expected to take a £450 million hit after mistakenly issuing about $15 billion more structured notes and exchange traded notes than it had registered for sale.
London-listed shares in the bank closed about 4% lower on Monday, before the block trade was announced.
