Lloyds bosses cash in on £1.2m Christmas present

BOSSES at Lloyds Bank have raked in £1.2m after selling shares when the stock market opened after Christmas.

Chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio (pictured with

wife Ana), chief operating officer Juan Colombas and chief risk officer Stephen Shelley sold 1.8m shares in the bank last Friday, filings revealed yesterday. Colombas cashed in the most, selling 1m shares for £630,000. He still owns a stake in the bank worth £6.8m.

Horta-Osorio, 55, who some predict will leave in the next year, flogged 782,045 shares for £492,688. He also bought 31,426 shares into an ISA in his name, while Ana bought 31,436 into her ISA for £39,779.

Horta-Osorio’s remaining 0.03pc stake is now worth £13m. Over the course of 2019, he has cashed in shares worth £4.9m. This comes on top of his £1.3m base salary for the year, his £1.1m of fixed share awards, £419,000 pension, £157,000 of benefits and maximum £5m of performance-based rewards.

The share sales round off a tricky month for the bank. A review into its handling of the HBOS Reading fraud left HortaOsorio red-faced, as it concluded that Lloyds needed to re-assess the compensation it paid to victims.

The scandal at the Reading branch of HBOS, which was acquired by Lloyds in 2008, saw six bankers and advisers convicted of fraud in 2017 after they spent millions of pounds of customers’ money on luxury holidays and prostitutes.

Days before Christmas this year, victims of the fraud were handed £35,000 each by Lloyds as a gesture of goodwill as they wait for cases to be reviewed.

This will add £7m to the £102m it has already paid customers defrauded by the crooks.

Despite the bank’s troubles, Lloyds shares have jumped by 22pc over the course of 2019, helped by a post-election lift.