Bankers for Bradford & Bingley have been left to sell over 70 per cent of its £400 million cash call, the UK lender said.
The mortgage bank, which has seen a torrid three months since it first surprised the market with news of an emergency rights issue, named former head of rival Alliance & Leicester Richard Pym as chief executive with immediate effect.
Mr Pym replaces Steven Crawshaw, who quit in June for health reasons as B&B struggled to push through the funding boost.
The embattled bank, forced to turn to investors for cash in the face of a fast-deteriorating UK economy, said on Monday investors took up only 27.8 per cent of its fundraising.
Underwriters Citi and UBS now have until Friday to place the remainder of the cut-price, twice-restructured offering.
The outcome of the rights issue - latest in a string of capital injections for banks battered by the credit crunch and the broader macroeconomic slowdown - is well below historical take-up levels for rights issues but is in line with analysts' expectations and above a paltry 8 per cent seen at rival HBOS.
B&B traded close to the rights price of 55p in the run-up to the call, and just above as subscriptions closed on Friday.
Most of B&B's retail shareholders, who made up around 40 per cent of the investor base before the rights issue, are not expected to have participated, but four top shareholders - Standard Life, Legal & General, Prudential's M&G and HBOS's Insight - are understood to have taken up their roughly 13 per cent share of the fundraising.
The four agreed to support Citi and UBS after a deal with US private equity firm TPG fell through last month after a rating downgrade, forcing B&B to again overhaul its cash call.
They had been expected to take up as much as £145 million of shares to back the underwriters, in a deal also supported by six of Britain's largest lenders - spreading the cost of propping up B&B over 12 major institutions.
"We're all very big players. It's not a big concern to us," one source familiar with the matter said today.
"The rights issue doesn't settle until the end of the week, so we have five days to place the rump. We'll see how much demand there is and then determine what we'll do."
The six retail banks have agreed to take on up to half the rights issue or as much as 3 per cent each of B&B. That number should come down, however, after take-up was stronger than expected at the time of the deal and with shares currently trading close to 55p, well above recent lows.
If they took up their maximum, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, HBOS, Barclays, Santander's Abbey and Royal Bank of Scotland would be left with just under 20 per cent of B&B's enlarged share base.
Reuters