Bankers for Bradford & Bingley have been left to sell more than 70 per cent of shares from its £400 million rights issue.

By Friday's rights issue deadline expiry, 27.8 per cent of its new shares had been taken up by investors, the struggling lender said, meaning almost £300 million of new shares are being left with underwriters.

Meanwhile, the company has unveiled former Alliance & Leicester boss Richard Pym as its new chief executive after Steven Crawshaw stepped down in June due to ill health.

The embattled bank was forced to turn to investors for cash in the face of a fast-deteriorating UK economy. Underwriters Citi and UBS now have until Friday to sell the rest of the shares.

The company has around 850,000 smaller investors from the former building society's demutualisation in 2000, holding around a third of the shares.

They are unlikely to have taken part in the fundraising, because in recent weeks the stock has been trading below the "discounted" 55p price of the new shares.

However, four top shareholders - Standard Life, Legal & General, Prudential's M&G and HBOS's Insight - are understood to have taken up their share of the fundraising, roughly 13 per cent.

The four had agreed to support Citi and UBS after a deal with US private equity firm TPG fell through last month.

They had been expected to take up as much as £145 million of shares to back the underwriters, in a deal also supported by six of Britain's largest lenders - spreading the cost of propping up B&B over 12 institutions.

B&B has seen a turbulent few months, with its shares losing over three quarters of their value since January.

The lender also said there has been "no material change" in trading since its last update in June, when it revealed an £8 million pre-tax loss in the four months to the end of April.

The group was hit by sharply climbing arrears and a further £89 million in credit crunch losses.

In April, B&B first denied that it needed extra capital - before unveiling a £300 million rights issue in May at a "discount" price of 82p.

But shares fell below this level and following a profit warning, the lender later announced alternative plans to offer cheaper shares - as well as selling a 23 per cent stake in the company to private equity firm Texas Pacific.

Texas walked away from its £179 million investment in July, forcing B&B to revamp its plans for the second time.

B&B is due to post its results for the first half of a difficult year for the banking sector on August 29.

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