Citigroup prices $1.5 billion preferreds; AmTrust Financial’s new issue frees to trade

By Stephanie N. Rotondo

Phoenix, March 13 – After the rush of new issues that hit the preferred stock market on Thursday, a trader said he “can’t believe it’s so quiet” in Friday trading.

That being said, he expected that the space would “keep seeing a slew of bank deals coming in the next week and the rest of the month.

“It appears that there is enough pent-up demand that everything is getting swallowed up.”

Supporting that opinion was the news that Citigroup Inc. was launching an offering of $1,000-par series O fixed-to-floating rate noncumulative preferreds on Friday.

The deal later priced at 5.875%, with $1.5 billion of the preferreds being offered.

Among the new deals priced Thursday, AmTrust Financial Services Inc.’s $165 million offering of 7.5% $25-par series D noncumulative preferreds freed from the syndicate at 10:30 a.m. ET on Friday.

As for the secondary market, it was deemed “soft” by a trader.

Judging by the Wells Fargo Hybrid and Preferred Securities index, that was indeed that case, as the index traded weaker for most of the session. However, it managed to finish the day up 1 basis point.

The index was down 11 bps at mid-morning.

Elsewhere, Bank of America Corp.’s $1.9 billion offering of 6.1% $1,000-par series AA fixed-to-floating rate noncumulative preferred stock from Thursday was pegged around 100.5 early in the session, but fell to par bid, 100.25 offered by the close.

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