LONDON (AP) - Bradford & Bingley (B&B), Britain's biggest buy-to-let mortgage lender, revealed yesterday that its bankers have been left with more than 70 percent of its £400 million ($747 million) rights issue, confirming expectations of a poor take-up by investors.

B&B, which has been hit hard by the credit squeeze, also announced it has hired the former head of rival Alliance & Leicester plc. as its new chief executive.

The B&B rights issue, in which a company raises fresh capital by creating and selling new shares to existing shareholders, was one of several by British banking institutions in recent months as they seek to shore up capital lost by the credit squeeze.

Although B&B's 27.8 percent takeup by investors of the new shares was better than the 8.29 percent achieved by the Halifax Bank of Scotland on its much larger £4 billion rights issue, the B&B offering still left underwriters with around £300 million ($560 million) of shares.

The underwriters, UBS and Citigroup, now have until Friday to offload those shares or become owners.

B&B has been hit hard by the downturn in the buy-to-let market, where properties are bought specifically to be rented out, usually with a more expensive mortgage.

Richard Pym, who retired as chief executive of Alliance & Leicester a year ago, will take over the reins immediately. Mr. Pym replaces Steven Crawshaw who stepped down in June due to ill health - chairman Rod Kent has been in charge in the interim.

Collins Stewart analyst Alex Potter said that Mr. Pym helped build one of Britain's higher-quality mortgage books while at Alliance & Leicester, but added that he faced a tough job at B&B.

"Pym is a safe pair of hands in our view to try to shepherd B&B through the coming asset quality problems we feel it will suffer, however we also feel he can do little to avert said problems," Mr. Potter said.

B&B's rights issue has been more troubled than most, with the lender forced to restructure the offer twice.

It first announced plans to sell some £300 million worth of shares at 82 pence in May, but as its shares fell below that level - and following a profit warning - the lender announced alternative plans to offer cheaper shares and sell a 23 percent stake to Texas Pacific.

It had to switch course again when the US private equity firm backed out of that deal in July, deciding to press on with an enlarged £400 million rights issue at a deeply discounted price of 55 pence per share.

The stock ended down 0.9 percent at 54.25 pence ($1.01) in London yesterday.

B&B, which is due to report first-half results on August 29 added that there has been "no material change" in trading since its last update in June, when it revealed an £8 million pretax 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.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has had the most successful - and the largest - rights issue in Europe, with investors putting up around 95 percent of the £12 billion it sought by issuing new shares in June.

Others, like B&B and HBOS, have had mixed fortunes. Barclays secured £4.5 billion in new funding from a range of foreign investors, but only 19 percent of its shares were taken up by existing investors.