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Osborne delays Lloyds' sell off

Osborne delays Lloyds’ sell off

(29 January 2016 – United Kingdom) Chancellor George Osborne has opted to delay the sale of the government's final stake in Lloyds Banking Group, citing global market turmoil and slowing growth as key factors in the decision.

Confirmed via Twitter, Osborne said “…we'll only sell when turbulent markets have calmed down”

Osborne told reporters that his "principal concern" in deciding to postpone the sale was turbulence in the financial markets, despite "hundreds of thousands" of private investors being "interested".

"I want to create a share owning democracy and I want to give the British people a chance to buy shares in Lloyds bank, a bank that they had to bail out. It is also my responsibility to make sure we have a secure and sound economy and with these turbulent financial markets it wouldn't be right to have the Lloyds share sale now," he said.

The sale of the final part of the government's stake in Lloyds was a general election pledge made by Prime Minister David Cameron. It was announced in October 2015 and expected to raise £2 billion, making it one of the largest privatisations since the sales of both BT (£3.9 billion) and British Gas (£5.6 billion) in the 1980s.

"We need those markets to calm down, and then we can proceed with the sale. We've got hundreds of thousands of people interested in buying these shares, I want to sell them the shares, but it wouldn't be right to undertake that sale when frankly things are pretty turbulent out there on the stock markets and the global financial markets."

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