British banking firm Lloyds Banking Group is buying the UK credit card business MBNA, which is a unit of Bank of America. This will be the British bank’s first major acquisition since its bailout during the financial crisis. Lloyds is still partly owned by the U.K. government. Bank of America decided to sell the unit, which has about five million customers and a loan book of around £7 billion, in 2011. News reports suggested the deal could be a sign of the financial health of the once beleaguered British bank, which at one point of time was banned from acquisitions. The British government is in the process of slowly selling off its remaining 6.9% stake in the bank. Lloyds said it expects the acquisition to increase group revenue by £650 million a year and enhance its net interest margin by 0.1 percentage point. The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the first half of 2017.
