What happened
Shares of British banker Barclays PLC (BCS 0.77%) got decimated on Monday after one of its peers across the channel, BNP Paribas subsidiary Exane BNP Paribas, was reported to have downgraded the British bank from outperform to neutral.
As of 1 p.m. ET, Barclays stock is down 10.2%.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
And that's only the beginning of the bad news for Barclays -- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, it's the logical conclusion.
This morning, Barclays got hit by a triple whammy of bad news. First, Reuters reported that "Barclays faces an estimated 450 million pound ($592 million) loss and regulatory scrutiny for exceeding a U.S. limit on sales of structured [financial] products ... linked to crude oil and market volatility," in what Reuters is describing as a "major regulatory blunder."
In connection with this news, Barclays said it will need to delay a 1 billion-pound ($1.3 billion) share buyback it had planned to conduct this quarter. The bank still hopes to conduct the buyback once it gets this mess cleaned up, in the second quarter of 2022.
Now what
And now that brings us to the third bit of bad news for this suddenly beleaguered bank stock.
It seems not everyone is happy with this delay, or with the loss -- or more likely both. As StreetInsider.com reports today, an unnamed shareholder of Barclays is trying to sell 575 million shares of Barclays stock -- just under 3.5% of all shares of Barclays currently outstanding, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Given the loss, the loss of a bullish catalyst in the form of a buyback, and the selling pressure from a large shareholder, today is turning into a very unpleasant day to own Barclays stock.
