Britain has kickstarted the sale of its shares in Lloyds Banking Group, selling a 6 per cent stake in the part-nationalised lender and raising 3.2 billion pounds ($5.1 billion).
The placing price was 75 pence per share, a 3 per cent discount to Lloyds’ closing price on Monday and ahead of the government’s average buy-in price of 73.6 pence.
Britain’s Conservative-led coalition government regards the sale as a milestone in the country’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, during which taxpayers pumped a combined 66 billion pounds into Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.
UK Financial Investments (UKFI) sold the shares to financial institutions through an accelerated bookbuild. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Cazenove and UBS Investment Bank were joint book runners. Lazard acted as capital advisor.
The government’s stake in Lloyds will be reduced to 32.7 per cent from 38.7 per cent previously. It has agreed not to sell any more shares in the bank for 90 days.
