Deals: Bank of New York, Joining Crowd, Signs Up to Issue $1 Billion

Bank of New York Co. on Monday filed a $1.05 billion shelf registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The money-center joined a string of banks that have filed this summer to issue various types of debt.

Bank of New York said that under the filing and a previous one it could issue as much as $1.45 billion.

Proceeds from the offering would be used for general corporate purposes, including investments in subsidiaries or extension of credit to them, the bank said.

Banks that have filed shelf registrations with the SEC in the past few months include First Union for $1.8 billion, MBNA Corp. for $750 million, Wells Fargo & Co. for $2.6 billion, and Citicorp for $5.5 billion.

Analysts said banks have a host of reasons - including refinancing of maturing debt, funding of loan growth, and diversification of funding sources - for filing new shelf registrations with the SEC.

"Deposit growth isn't coming anywhere near keeping pace with loan growth," said a bond analyst. "Banks are relying more on wholesale and the purchase-funds market to keep pace."

In addition, some experts said that the capital from securities gains has started to diminish.

"If banks can't fund their growing loan portfolios with investment securities runoff, they are turning to capital markets through medium term note programs," said Greg Novak, a senior vice president at Thomson Bankwatch, an affiliate of American Banker.

Additionally, banks last year issued a lot of one-year notes, which they need to refinance, said analysts.

A spokesman at a money-center bank said that banks often begin to make their budgets and plans for the following year sometime in the midsummer, which may encourage a flurry of such filings.

Analysts said that banks may be gearing up to take advantage of interest rates that may fall more toward the end of the year.

"I think what they are doing is lining up potential funding sources so that if rates do go down over the next three to six months, they will have enough borrowing capacity to access the markets to get even lower-cost funding," said Matt Burnell, a bond analyst at Merrill Lynch.

Some industry experts expect banks to bring a host of new issuance to market after Labor Day.

Although the clustering of the filings in a short period is not necessarily typical, experts said it is not puzzling.

"The filings make sense," said Tanya Azarchs, a director of financial institutions at Standard & Poor's Ratings Group. "People want to have ample capacity."

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