Lloyds Bank plans to float 25% of its revived TSB business at the end of June with at least some of the shares being made available to the public. The bank must sell the business, which has been valued by City analysts at around £1.5 billion. It follows the bank’s £20.5 billion taxpayer-backed rescue in 2008. The stock market float of TSB is a condition of the Lloyds’ bailout, which ultimately required approval from the European Commission (EC). The EC raised concerns about the size of market share the bank had following the bailout and told Lloyds it must sell off some assets. Those assets included 632 branches, which the bank initially intended to sell to the Co-op Group’s banking arm. But when that deal collapsed last year Lloyds opted to hive off the branches and revive TSB as a separate brand, 18 years after the two banks merged.
