Barclays has sold nearly all of the shares in its $9.4-billion (6.9-billion-euro) rights issue, the British bank said today.

The lender has received valid acceptances in respect of 3.04 billion new ordinary shares, which represented 94.63 per cent of the rights issue, it said in a statement.

Barclays had launched the cut-price shares sale to existing investors last month to help meet a regulatory demand to plug a hole in its balance sheet.

Trading in the new shares will begin today, with the remaining stock placed on the market.

The shares were sold at 185 pence each, which was a steep 40 per cent discount to the price of its traded stock just before it announced the move on July 30.

In June, the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), which supervises Britain’s banking sector, had ordered Barclays to find £12.8 billion of additional capital following a review of top lenders.

The PRA watchdog told Barclays to increase the amount of equity it holds against total assets, a measure called the leverage ratio and which provides banks with a cash buffer in case of future financial crises.

Barclays has stated that the shares sale, and separate measures to shrink parts of its business, should help push its leverage ratio to above 3.0 per cent — the minimum required by the PRA — by June 2014.

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