July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc, the U.K.'s third- biggest bank, said shareholders bought 19 percent of the shares they were offered, as they shunned the bank's 4.5 billion-pound ($9 billion) fundraising plan.

Shareholders agreed to buy 753 million pounds of the 4 billion pounds of stock available to them, the London-based bank said in a statement today. Barclays will sell the rest of the stock to an investor group that includes the Qatar Investment Authority. Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. has bought 500 million pounds of Barclays shares separately.

Barclays Chief Executive Officer John Varley, 52, is raising the money to replenish capital depleted by writedowns and to fund growth. The U.K. bank's shares slid amid concern about possible further writedowns. Barclays dropped this month below the 282 pence-a-share price at which investors could take up the offer.

``There's enormous nervousness among those needing to raise capital right now,'' said Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, a London-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. ``Banks are now likely to seek alternatives to selling stock until there's more stability.''

HBOS Plc, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, is separately raising 4 billion pounds in a rights offering that closed today. Morgan Stanley and Dresdner Kleinwort Ltd., which are underwriting the sale, may be forced to buy the stock at a loss after it traded below the rights-offering price.

Barclay's shares climbed 10 percent to 320.25 pence in London, the day after the offer to shareholders closed. The stock has dropped 52 percent in the past 12 months.

Writedowns, Growth

Varley will use half the money raised to lift the bank's so-called core equity Tier 1 capital ratio above its 5.25 percent target and the rest for ``business opportunities,'' including possible acquisitions. HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K. bank that raised 12.3 billion pounds last month, need extra capital to absorb writedowns and potential customer bad loans amid the worst slowdown in the U.K. housing market for 15 years.

``It does not make it entirely clear that there is a high degree of investor confidence about Barclays at the moment,'' said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, an equity strategist at Charles Stanley, referring to the portion of the bank's stock bought by existing investors.

The QIA will become Barclays's biggest shareholder after today's sale with a 6.2 percent stake in the bank. Challenger, a company set up to represent Qatar's royal family, will take a separate stake of 1.86 percent. Sumitomo, Japan's third-largest bank, will own a 2.1 percent stake in Barclays. Singapore's Temasek Holdings Pte. will own less than 3 percent, while China Development Bank will hold about 3.1 percent.

Credit Suisse Group and JPMorgan Cazenove worked with Barclays Capital as joint brokers on the sale. Dealings in the new shares begin July 22.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Livesey in London blivesey@bloomberg.net; Elisa Martinuzzi in Milan at emartinuzzi@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 18, 2008 11:47 EDT