JC Flowers sells another 10% stake in OneSavings Bank

Funds managed and advised by private investment firm JC Flowers & Co have sold 25m shares in OneSavings Bank, equating to a stake of around 10%, for approximately £110m.

The shares were sold at 438p each - a 6.3% discount to the closing price on Wednesday - and will reduce JC Flowers' stake to around 32%.

Citigroup and Credit Suisse acted as joint bookrunners and OneSavings will not receive any proceeds from the sale.

On 28 March, JC Flowers sold 24.3m shares in the challenger bank, also through Citi and Credit Suisse, at 395p each, raising gross proceeds of around £96m.

Investec put a note out on OneSavings on Thursday, lifting its target price on the hold-rated stock to 455p from 440p as it noted that the shares hit a new all-time high of 470.3p on Monday, and are up 167% in 11 months.

The brokerage said OneSavings reported a strong operational performance in the first quarter, which, in isolation, would have triggered 1-2% upgrades to its existing and above-consensus forecast through 2017-19. "Its volume performance in professional buy-to-let was (predictably) strong, while margin performance has been even more resilient than we expected. There are no credit issues worthy of comment."

At 1230 BST, the shares were down 7.4% to 433p.