A PoPULAR ISSUE.
The bonds, in fact, will rank pan passe with those issued last December, but whereas those bonds carried with them an option to redeem into 4 per cent. Consols in the following July on the basis of £117 of 4 per cent. Consols for each £100 of Treasury Bonds surrendered, or in January of 1929 on the basis of £114 10s. of 4 per cent. Consols for each £100 in Treasury Bonds surrendered, the new bonds will, of course, only carry the second of these options, the former one having been already exercised. Indeed a circumstance which has helped to secure a good reception for the new bonds, as well as to aid the upward movement in all investment stocks, during this week has been the announcement by the Treasury that the first option of last July was exercised to the extent of about £134,000,000, or about 62 per -cent. of the total of the series- of Treasury Bonds issued- last December. Not unnaturally the point was regarded as indicative of a belief that sooner or later the trend of high-class investment securi- ties must be in the upward direction. The new 5 per cent. Treasury Bonds announced during this week are being offered by tender at the minimum price of 101, and, inasmuch as tenders are due on the 23rd instant, the result will have - become known by- the time these notes are in the reader's hands. I have little doubt that the issue will be well over- subscribed.
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