THE UK Government now owns less than nine per cent of bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group after selling shares worth more than £340 million.
The taxpayer owned 43 per cent of the bank after the government bailed it out six years ago. This is now 8.99 per cent following the latest tranche of share sales.
Announcing the move yesterday, the Treasury said the government has now recovered almost £17 billion of the £20.3bn it paid to save Lloyds, once share sales and dividends received are accounted for.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said: “Selling our shares in Lloyds and making sure that we get back all the cash taxpayers injected into it during the financial crisis is one of my top priorities as Chancellor.”
The Lloyds trading plan initially ran from December 2014 to June this year. Earlier this month the government announced further sales of Lloyds shares would also be made through a trading plan.
The decision saw Hammond abandon former Chancellor George Osborne’s plan to offer reduced price Lloyds shares to the public and instead take the remainder to the stock market, selling for less than the 73.6p average paid by the government.
Lloyds shares stood at 56p yesterday but the Treasury said it would not make an overall loss thanks to earlier profits. All proceeds are used to reduce national debt.
The news comes one day after Lloyds announced it had set aside a further £1bn to cover compensation claims for mis-sold PPI claims.
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