M&T Bank Taps Preferred Retail Market to Get Goldman-Level Rate

A regional US lender with $25 billion exposure to the risky commercial real estate sector has pulled off the same financing cost as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. by tapping a little-used market for bank capital.

Buffalo, New York-based M&T Bank Corporation issued preferred shares, which banks in the US use to raise capital beyond common equity. This market is roughly divided into two categories: one sold in retail investor-friendly pieces of $25 and another that comes in much larger chunks of $1,000, with the latter having dominated issuance in recent years.

Instead M&T Bank opted for the former, raising $750 ...