Barclays investor offloads £900m and sends shares tumbling after securities slip up
Shares in Barclays have plunged this morning as a major shareholder offloaded around £900m worth of shares, just one day after a slip up on securities selling saw it book a £450m hit.
Barclays’ shares plunged over 4.4 per cent in early trading today after an unknown seller offloaded a huge stake in the firm this morning. The group’s biggest investors include QIA, Vanguard and BlackRock, according to Bloomberg.
It came just one day after the lender admitted it had sold too many structured notes and overshot a limit placed on it by US regulators.
The bank was allowed to sell $20.8bn worth of the securities but exceeded that limit by $15.2bn and will now have to buy back the shares at the prices they were sold.
Discrepancies in the pricing now mean that the bank is set to weather a £450m hit from the transactions.
Barclays’ London-listed shares were already down about four per cent yesterday at market close before tumbling further this morning on news of the major share offload.
Analysts at Shore Capital said yesterday that the lender was “tripping over its shoelaces”.