UBS drawing up house builders placing plan: report

LONDON (Reuters) - A group of Britain's biggest institutional investors are working on plans drawn up by bankers at UBS to provide direct funding to shore up the housebuilding sector, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The report said bankers at UBS (UBSN.VX) had drawn up possible plans for a wide-ranging placing by major shareholders in companies such as Taylor Wimpey (TW.L) and Barratt Developments (BDEV.L).

Shares in house builders have been hammered in recent weeks over concerns about the bleak and uncertain market outlook. Shares in Taylor Wimpey have fallen 57 percent in the last three months and Barratt is down 78 percent over the same period.

The report said the plan for a placing followed requests from investors to the house builders to abandon any plans they may have to launch rights issues. No details of the possible size of the placing were given.

The report said UBS usually advised both Taylor Wimpey and Barratt. It has proposed possible plans for a placing that could see big institutions such as Standard Life (SL.L), Scottish Widows, Legal & General (LGEN.L) and M&G provide cash to refinance the housebuilders.

The report quoted one unnamed institutional investor as saying they backed the idea of a placing over a rights issue.

"It's simply a faster, more stable way of injecting cash into companies," the investor said. "With the housebuilders, we believe there is value in the companies that is being hit by short-term problems.

"It is worth clubbing together to make sure this value is rescued."

A spokesman for Barratt declined to comment on the report. No one at Taylor Wimpey, Standard Life, Legal & General or UBS was available to comment.

In a separate report, the Independent on Sunday said retirement homes builder McCarthy & Stone had called in bankers at NM Rothschild to restructure its 800 million pounds ($1.56 billion) of debt.

The report said the board and representatives of leading shareholders including HBOS HBOS.L and Scottish property magnate Tom Hunter, had discussed with the bankers how to avoid breaching debt covenants.

No one was available at Rothschild or HBOS to comment. McCarthy & Stone could not be reached.

(Reporting by Kate Holton, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)