Banks led by Barclays Plc have lost millions of dollars of their own money plus wiped out fees from underwriting more than $1.2 billion of bonds and loans for Covis Pharmaceuticals Inc. that proved particularly hard to sell, Bloomberg News reported. The banks were already stuck with more than $300 million of loans to the company that they couldn’t sell, and have now sold another $945 million of loans at a steep discount to face value, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The weak demand for the company’s debt is enough to erase more than $20 million of underwriting fees that banks also including HSBC Holdings Plc and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. were due to receive on the deal, plus pile on additional losses for the banks beyond that. The loss is the latest sign that borrowing is getting a little harder for some companies as the Federal Reserve and other central banks globally prepare to tighten the money supply. Although banks have been minting money since 2020 from underwriting bonds and loans during a period of ultra-low interest rates, the easy money there may be coming to an end. A series of sales have been withdrawn recently, including two European offerings on Friday.
