Lloyds Bank share sale raises further £0.5bn to repay taxpayer
The government has sold off another slug of its shares in Lloyds Bank, meaning the state now has an interest of less than seven per cent.
More than £17.5bn has been recovered of the £20.3bn forked out by the taxpayer, the Treasury said this morning.
The sale follows the previous auction in November that took recoveries to "over £17bn".
A plan to sell the government's remaining position in the bailed-out bank to institutional investors was announced by the chancellor Phillip Hammond in October, ditching plans to offload them to retail investors.
Hammond left today's announcement of the sale to economics minister Simon Kirby:
Selling our shares in Lloyds Banking Group and making sure that we get back all the cash taxpayers injected into it during the financial crisis is a key government priority.
So I am pleased that we have continued to reduce our stake in Lloyds, and have now recovered over £17.5bn for the taxpayer.
The government's residual ownership in Lloyds is through UK Financial Investments and it angered retail investors in October by revealing it would only be offering shares to institutional investors.
Hammond said experts had warned him over flogging the shares back to the taxpayer due to ongoing stock market volatility.