HBOS underwriters take £100m paper hit

Lead underwriters Dresdner Kleinwort and Morgan Stanley called off the placing period a day early yesterday after moving a further 29.53% of HBOS shares to sub-underwriters and fund managers. Existing HBOS shareholders took up just 8.29% of the new shares by last Friday’s deadline. Dresdner and Morgan will now take some of the remaining 62.18% onto their books, while offloading further stakes to financial institutions previously agreed to be sub-underwriters. The underwriters took a £100m paper loss last night, after HBOS stock closed down 6% to 264.5p – well below the 275p rights issue ...