The UK government has sold 10 percent of Lloyds Banking Group in the past five months through its trading plan, reducing its stake to less than 15 per cent.
Lloyds was rescued during the 2007/09 financial crisis, costing UK taxpayers £20.5 billion and leaving the government with a 43 per cent stake.
Britain’s finance ministry began selling its shares in September 2013 and is on track to return the bank to full private ownership next year.
Finance minister George Osborne has said he wants to return Britain’s banking assets to the private sector at a faster pace and is also looking to sell at least three quarters of the government’s stake in Royal Bank of Scotland over the next five years.
The latest Lloyds share sales have reduced the government’s stake to 14.98 per cent, from 15.9 per cent previously, the bank said on Thursday.
The sale of shares in Lloyds brings the total recovered for taxpayers to more than 13 billion pounds ($20 billion), according to a separate statement from the Treasury.
“I am determined to build on this success, and to continue to return Lloyds to the private sector and reduce our national debt,” Osborne said in the statement.
If the government sold its remaining stake in Lloyds at today’s price, it would raise another 9.2 billion pounds, increasing the total to more than 21 billion pounds.
That’s almost 700 million pounds more than taxpayers spent to bail out the lender during the financial crisis. Lloyds stock has risen 13 per cent this year.
In contrast, selling the entire Treasury stake in RBS at the share price at the time of the report would have lost about £7 billion.