UK government plans retail sale of Lloyds stake

The UK government is planning a retail sale of its 9.2% shareholding in Lloyds Banking Group, fully returning the shares to the private sector between 2016 and 2017.

HM Treasury today received a £130m dividend payment from bailed-out Lloyds, taking the total received from the bank to £318m.

“The £130m we’ve received today marks another milestone in government’s plan to recover the money taxpayers were forced to put into Lloyds during the financial crisis,” said the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Harriet Baldwin, in a statement.

“The government has already recovered over 80% of its original investment in Lloyds and today’s dividend payment takes the amount we’ve recovered from the bank to over £16.8bn.

“I am determined to build on this success by making Lloyds’ shares available to the public this year, so that we can build a share-owning democracy and continue to reduce our national debt,” she said.

Since the financial crisis the government has recovered over £75bn of financial assets for the taxpayer.

During the global financial crisis, the government spent £20.5bn of taxpayers’ money to acquire a 43% stake in the Lloyds, whose shares were this afternoon trading just above 67p.

The bank last month booked a Q1 statutory pre-tax profit of £0.65m, down 46% on the year. Its underlying profit fell 6% £2.05bn due to the sale of TSB, but this was largely better than forecast as a reduction in impairment charges, PPI provisions and lower costs counterbalanced a small decline in income.

To date, only institutional investors have enjoyed the opportunity of buying the taxpayer-owned shares in Lloyds.