£750m lost from Lloyds

Chancellor’s rush to sell up cost taxpayer

TAXPAYERS have lost out on at least £750million because the Tories sold a big chunk of Lloyds on the cheap, the Mirror can reveal.

The Government yesterday confirmed it had offloaded its final stake in the bank – nine years after it was saved with a £20.3billion bail-out.

Ministers claimed by selling the shares over several years, plus the receipt of dividends, meant £21.2bn was clawed back.

But Chancellor Philip Hammond’s botched decision to restart the share sale last October deprived taxpayers of even more. That’s because all the

shares sold since then were below the 73.6p break-even mark.

Analysis by the Mirror found around £4.4bn worth of shares were sold since October, mostly to big City institutions.

But that’s less than the £5.15bn Hammond would have got if he had waited and sold them for more than 73.6p.

The £750m is equivalent to the starting salaries of 34,000 nurses.

The majority of the taxpayers’ original 43% stake was sold at a profit.

Lloyds’ boss Antonio Horta-Osorio hailed yesterday’s milestone, saying: “We’ve turned the group around.”

But Lloyds’ staff have paid the price, with worker numbers falling from 120,000 to 70,000 since 2008, though that includes those who left in the TSB split.

Branch numbers have fallen from to 2,250 to 1,850.

Investec banking analyst Ian Gordon said: “We were more than a little surprised (and disappointed) by Chancellor Hammond’s decision in October.

“Be that as it may, we see the taxpayers’ loss as investors’ gain. We believe there is further to go.”