Marshall & Ilsley: Pump Up the Volume

MILWAUKEE (TheStreet) -- Marshall & Ilsley (MI Quote) shares rose Thursday on a massive spike in volume after the regional bank priced its common stock offering.

Marshall & Ilsley late Wednesday priced its common share offering of 136 million shares at $5.75 a share, raising $750 million after deducting underwriting discounts, commissions and offering expenses. The bank also granted underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 20.4 million shares.

Marshall & Ilsley said it will use proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, and also to boost capital levels of its subsidiaries.

Following the pricing announcement, JPMorgan analyst Steven Alexopoulos upgraded the stock to neutral from underweight. Alexopoulos argued it was time to lock in profits on the short trade after the bank bolstered its capital position.

Meanwhile, Fitch Ratings affirmed the ratings of Marshall & Ilsley and its subsidiary banks, and the firm removed the ratings from Rating Watch Negative and assigned a Negative Outlook. Fitch said that the capital raise provides "a significant boost to capital levels."

Shares of Marshall & Ilsley were up 12 cents, or 2%, to $6.13. Earlier in the session, the stock touched an intraday high of $6.24. More than 82.7 million shares changed hands by 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, compared to the stock's three-month average daily volume of 8.6 million, according to the Yahoo! Finance.

Marshall & Ilsley has a 364.6 million-share float with a short interest float of 3.7% as of Sept. 25, according to Yahoo! Finance. Only 1% of the company's shares are held by insiders with another 65.2% owned by institutions.

-- Written by Robert Holmes in New York.

Check out all of Tuesday's high-volume, under-$5 stocks at the Dollar Store

Follow Robert Holmes on Twitter and become a fan of TheStreet.com on Facebook.