UK Treasury to sell Lloyds’ shares to public
(6 October 2015 – Britain) The British government said it will sell at least £2 billion ($A 4.27 billion) worth of shares in Lloyds Banking Group to retail investors in 2016, a move which will return the bank to full private ownership.
The sale is set to trump that of British Telecom and British Gas sell off by the Thatcher government in the 1980s.
In addition to raising money to pay down Britain's debt, those sales aimed to encourage ordinary Britons to invest in the stock market, an aspiration shared by the current Conservative government, which gathered for its annual party conference in Manchester on Sunday.
"This final sale will be the biggest privatisation in over 20 years and I don't want all those shares to go to City institutions. I want them to go to members of the public," chancellor George Osborne said on Monday.
Market sources said the shares are likely to be attractive to retail investors due to the high dividend yield they are expected to offer in the near future.
The bank was one of the biggest dividend payers in the FTSE-100 before its £20.5 billion taxpayer-funded bailout during the 2007/09 financial crisis, leaving the government holding a 43 percent stake.
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