Barclays Plc raised $1.75 billion through an additional tier 1 bond, attracting strong investor orders in another sign of a revival for the market rocked earlier this year by the historic writedown of Credit Suisse Group AG securities.
The London-based bank is sold the dollar perpetual AT1 note that’s callable in June 2030. Demand at the last update was over 12.5 times the size of the debt on offer, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak about it. This enabled the issuer to tighten the yield to 9.623% from around 10.5% area at initial price talk, with the deal expected to price later on Wednesday.
Last week UBS Group AG sold additional tier 1 notes, its first such issuance since roughly $17 billion of Credit Suisse’s AT1s were wiped out as part of a UBS takeover brokered by the Swiss government. The Swiss lender pulled in roughly 10 times the bids for the debt on offer.
The new issuance will bolster Barclays’ AT1 capital structure — an important cushion that helps lenders comply with core capital requirements without relying solely on more expensive equity.
Read: Call Them AT1s or CoCos, Here’s Why They Can Blow Up: QuickTake
Barclays’ securities will convert into equity if a capital adequacy trigger has been breached, setting them apart from the Credit Suisse AT1 notes that had a complete loss imposed by the Swiss authorities.
Global contingent convertible bonds from banks have rebounded from their slump in March. Bloomberg’s Global CoCo Banking Statistics Index has rallied 15% since March 20 and the average yield premium has shrunk 240 basis points since then.
--With assistance from Caleb Mutua.
(Updates with final pricing in headline and the first two paragraphs. A previous version of this story was corrected to remove reference to a shareholder vote and revised to clarify that Barclays long has had an equity conversion clause.)
