Across the pond, they’re raising money too

By: HousingWire staff
April 29, 2008 1:23 PM CST

MarketWatch covers the trials and trevails of HBOS, the UK’s largest mortgage lender:

HBOS … said Tuesday that it plans to raise 4 billion pounds ($7.95 billion) through the sale of stock to existing shareholders as it battles against rising write-downs and tighter lending margins.

The announcement made HBOS the second major U.K. bank to announce a so-called rights issue in recent days after Royal Bank of Scotland said it needed to raise 12 billion pounds to repair its balance sheet.

HBOS also said Monday it has taken 2.84 billion pounds of write-downs so far this year.

Here at HW, we’ve joked in recent weeks that we should have developed a template to cover mortgage bank’s earnings reports this past season: writedowns totalling x, capital raise equaling y, management says market conditions were tough, especially in March, and will suspend dividend if it hasn’t already.

Apparently, things aren’t all that different across the pond, either.

Update: We’d be remiss if we neglected to mention Germany’s dynamic duo of Deutsche Bank AG and Allianz SE here. Deutsche reported its first quarterly net loss in five years, while Allianz saw profits drop 66 percent.