The British government will resume the sell-off of its stake in Lloyds Banking Group over the next six months. It will sell a further £3 billion worth of shares in the run-up to the general election. Chancellor George Osborne announced the share sell-off just 24 hours after the 24% taxpayer-owned bank had scraped through Bank of England stress tests. The shares are to be drip fed into the market over the next six months in a different sales process to that used in the past. It could cut the taxpayer’s stake in Lloyds to 20%, less than half the 43% the government took after almost £20 billion was pumped into the bank after the 2008 banking crisis.
