The oft-stated aspirational goal of a 15 per cent return on equity at Bank of Queensland looks likely to be pushed aside as the bank moves to sell A$450 million in new shares in the midst of a trading loss and an ill-defined shift in strategic direction.The bank is selling the new shares at $6.05, a discount of 17 per cent to the price on Friday. This is half the level of the bank's shares in March 2011 and only two-thirds of the price of the shares before the severity of the global financial crisis dawned on bank investors in late 2007.Yesterday, BOQ put its shares on a trading halt as it worked on the institutional placement for its share sale, which will account for around two-thirds of the new shares sold.The bank will sell the remainder of the new shares (put at around $165 million yesterday) to retail shareholders under an entitlement offer.One virtue of the share sale is that it deals swiftly with the bank's need to lift its capital base and meet the more stringent targets that the banking regulator, APRA, has set under Basel III.BOQ said the additional capital will lift its ratio of core tier-one capital by more than a third, to 8.6 per cent.How BOQ will effectively use this capital - beyond meeting minimum requirements and diluting returns for all shareholders - is something the bank's new management team talked about only in generalities yesterday.In the presentation slides at the investor briefing yesterday, the bank's chief executive, Stuart Grimshaw, justified the capital raising on the basis of "funding organic growth opportunities" and of "being a real challenger".One slide had the heading: "We will re-invest our challenger business and explore long-term breakout options".A strong theme of the presentation yesterday was an admission that the productivity of the bank's core business was pretty poor and the sales success of its branch network (three quarters of them "owner-managed") was disappointing.Grimshaw said yesterday that branch staff were doing too much of the work required to process a loan application and prepare it for a credit assessment.Other short-term plans include a willingness to deal once more with mortgage brokers, rostering staff to work in contact centres 24 hours a day and another review of the commissions paid to branch owners.Longer term goals are to lift the cross-sell within the branch network, with small- and medium-sized business owners being the main target.BOQ is also looking for a wealth management product to sell.