Lloyds will sell off further TSB stake
LLOYDS is selling another stake in spin-off lender TSB, it confirmed last night.
Bosses at the state-backed lender decided to press the button following the ‘No’ vote in last week’s referendum on independence.
Insiders said that it would have been forced to put its plans on ice if Scotland had voted to go it alone because of the uncertainty this would have created for TSB, which has its registered office in Edinburgh.
TSB was one of five banks, including Lloyds, that had previously announced contingency plans to move its registered office to London in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote.
Lloyds said it is selling 57.5m shares which represents 11.5pc of its stake in the challenger bank.
The price of the shares and the amount raised are expected to be confirmed today.
Unlike in the first shares sale, retail investors have been excluded, with only institutional investors able to take part.
Based on last night’s share price of 280p, the disposal will raise around £160m – although Lloyds is expected to sell the shares at a small discount. Lloyds had been widely expected to sell a second stake this week, after a 90-day ‘lock-in period’ banning it from offloading any more shares since the first disposal expired last Friday.
The lender sold a 38.5pc stake in TSB in June, raising £455m in a float which valued TSB at £1.3bn.
Another 90-day lock-in period will prevent it from offloading any more shares until the tail end of the year.
But the next offer is unlikely to take place until next spring, because of restrictions in the run-up to its annual report in March.
Lloyds (up 0.81p to 76.2p) believes selling off TSB gradually will raise more money, as it expects the price of TSB’s shares – which have already jumped from 260p to 280p – to continue to rise.
Uncertainty was removed by the referendum outcome.
It has to offload its remaining 50pc stake by the end of 2016 under a timetable imposed by the European Commission after taking a £20bn Government bailout at the height of the financial crisis in 2008.