Deal: Block trade in BP stock
Amount: £1.2 billion
Launched: May 14
Firm: Goldman Sachs
At 4.45pm on May 14, Gary Williams, head of equity trading at Goldman Sachs in London, was in a routine meeting at UK regulator the Securities & Investments Board. A note was passed to him from the secretary of Wiet Pot, Goldman's London head of equity sales. It was terse: "There's a big trade on, get back here." Williams sensed something out of the ordinary and immediately announced he was leaving. He grabbed a mobile phone - luckily one belonging to a Goldman colleague - and was dialling on the way out of the door.
"Big trade" was an understatement. What was beginning to unfold was the largest-ever block trade in the UK equity market, the sale by the Kuwait Investment Office (KIO) of 170 million shares in British Petroleum (BP) - 3% of the company's equity worth £1.22 billion (nearly $2 billion). In the next 18 hours, Goldman won and executed this trade - a complicated cross-market block deal including ADRs in New York and ordinary shares in London, each trading on different settlement cycles.
The process that led to Williams's breathless rush back to Goldman's offices in Peterborough Court had begun months earlier when the KIO appointed Schroders to advise on and structure a placement of part of its 9.3%