THE FIVE MILLION LOAN.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1857, 5 February 1880, Page 2

THE FIVE MILLION LOAN.

The following is from Westgarth’a Circular of December JHh: — New Zealand 5 Per Cent. Loan, .£5,003,0-00, due 1889.—The Bank of England offered this large loan, the largest amount as yet issued at any one time by any colony of the Australasian group, on tbe 11th instant, for public subscrip, tiou at tbe fixed price of .£97 10a 'The stock is due in 1889, the interest payable half-yearly on Ist May and Ist November. The payments were —5 per cent on application, 171 per cent on allotment, and the balance in January, February, and March. The price was thus reduced to about 961 net ex interest. The loan had an extremely attractive feature, namely, an option of conversion, open from March 1830 to March 1881, into an inscribed 4 per cent of fifty years’ term, in the proportion of £l2O of four per cent for each £IOO of five per cent stock, the inscription and the dividend payments being made by the Bank of England. This further New Zealand loan had been expected for some time past, and its selling prospects, owing to (the already unusually heavy debt of the colony, were regarded as somewhat doubtful. But partly from the still favorable condition of the general market, partly from the colony’s engagement to issue no further loan for at least three years, and partly, no doubt, from the_ high auspices under which the loan was issued, it proved quite a remarkable success. The total of tenders approached to £12,000,000, thus giving an allotment of a little over 40 per cent. It is remarkable too, that the previous New Zealand loan of £3,5' 0 000, which also was offered only last ye-.r by the Bank of England, was over applied for to about the same extent. The price advanced steadily acd rapidly to about 11- premium, and after a little fluctuation over two or three days, touched IJ, from which it bas gone back to 1} premium. Large transactions have already taken place, and the stock promises to be a leading one, in this respect, in its own class of securities.