Barclays, the UK banking group, has offloaded troubled loans worth more than £6bn ($11.7bn) in the past few months in a further sign that investors are increasingly willing to buy debt securities hit by the credit crunch.
Barclays executives yesterday said they had sold leveraged loans, mortgage-backed securities and mortgages with a value of £6.3bn in the first half of the year as part of an effort to scale back the bank's exposure to troubled debt securities. Most of the sales, which were agreed in May and June, were at prices consistent with valuations on Barclays' balance sheet, and did not require the bank to provide financing to buyers.
