Lloyds sale costs taxpayer £40m

Government offloads more bank shares at a loss

TAXPAYERS have lost an estimated £40million after the Government cut its stake in bailed out Lloyds bank to less than 2%.

The Treasury yesterday confirmed it offloaded another 1% of its remaining holding – nearly 700 million shares – over the past fortnight. Officials refused to say how much was raised.

But the Mirror estimates it could have raked in £470m, based on Lloyds’ average share price of just under 68p since mid-March.

That’s less than the £511m it would have made selling at 73.6p, what the taxpayer paid to rescue Lloyds at the height of the financial crisis.

The £40m shortfall is equivalent to the annual salaries for 1,800 extra NHS nurses.

The public’s stake was 43% at its peak.

Chancellor Philip Hammond restarted the sale of Lloyds’ shares through a “trading plan” last October.

Since then, all the shares have been sold below the break-even price, adding up to a total estimated loss of £550m.

Hammond said at the time: “Our key objective is to ensure that Lloyds returns to the private sector.” US investment giant Blackrock, which is paying ex-Chancellor George Osborne £650,000 a year for doing four days a month, is now Lloyds’ biggest single shareholder. The Treasury insists earlier sell-offs between 2013-15, when the share price was higher, meant the taxpayer won’t have lost out overall, with £20billion of the £20.3bn pumped in having already been clawed back.