SKY KOs DISCOVERY
THE Government has lost nearly £500million through selling off big chunks of taxpayer-saved Lloyds on the cheap.
Chancellor Philip Hammond ditched plans for a share sale to the public last October, opting to dish them out to big City investors instead.
Since then, the Treasury has flogged millions of shares in five separate tranches.
Yet all have been sold for much less than the 73.6p a share the taxpayer was forced to shell out to save Lloyds from collapse in 2008.
The latest sale has seen more than 676 million taxpayer-owned shares sold over the past month.
The Treasury refused to say how much it had raised but, going by Lloyds’ average share price over the past month, it could be around £443m.
That is £54m less than if they had been sold at the 73.6p break even price.
The losses were even bigger in the four previous share sales. The combined losses since last October amount to £471m, based on calculations by the Mirror.
That’s equivalent to the annual salary for more than 14,700 nurses, or nearly 28,000 care workers.
The Treasury insisted share sales prior to last October were profitable and it aimed to break even by the time the taxpayers’ entire holding in Lloyds is sold.
It is down to just under 5%, from 43% at its peak.
The biggest single shareholder in Lloyds is now giant fund manager BlackRock. The US company, which has a near 6% stake, recently hired former Tory chancellor George Osborne on a lucrative sixfigure role as an advisor. More than £18.5billion has been returned to the Government’s coffers since the lender’s £20.3bn bailout.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury Simon Kirby said: “Since our decision to sell the Government’s stake in Lloyds, we have recovered over 90% of the money taxpayers injected into the bank during the financial crisis.
“This represents real progress and I am delighted that we are on track to return Lloyds to private ownership.”
All proceeds from the sale will be used to reduce the national debt, which rose by £251m a day last year and now stands at nearly £1.7trillion.
The Treasury defended the timing of the sale, claiming it was important to dispose of the taxpayers’ stake as soon as possible.
A spokeswoman for the Robin Hood Tax campaign said: “We need to know who is profiting from these share sales. Why would you sell now, at a loss?”
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk is to invest £115million over 10 years in a new research centre in Oxford developing treatments for type 2 diabetes.
Millions of Sky customers won’t be able to get Discovery’s channels from tomorrow unless a row is resolved.
The satellite giant is refusing to shell out what it claims is Discovery’s £850million demand to renew the contract.
Discovery disputes the figure and says it is asking for “a few pennies extra per year for each Sky household”.
Fans of Idris Elba’s kickboxing series Fighter will be able to see the final episode tonight. But the 12 Discovery channels – including Animal Planet, Eurosport and TLC – are set to disappear from Sky’s selection from tomorrow, unless an 11th hour compromise can be found.
As it stands, Sky customers won’t get any discount for losing the channels. The company said: “We will spend every penny that we were going to pay to Discovery on more and better content that our customers value.”