Around 250,000 people have registered to buy shares in Lloyds Banking Group, the government said as it sold down a further stake in the bailed-out bank and removed some of the complexity of its holding in Royal Bank of Scotland. Even as it prepares an offering of Lloyds shares to the public, the government is continuing to sell off shares to big City investors. The stake now stands at just below 11% as George Osborne continues with a plan to dribble out shares on to the stock market. At the time of the bailout in 2008 and 2009, the stake stood at 43%. In a separate announcement, RBS said it had permission to tidy up its shareholder structure by converting the B shares it issued to the government in 2009 into ordinary shares. These B shares were issued at the height of the banking crisis to pay for the asset protection scheme, which was required to insure its most troublesome loans, and were a mechanism to prevent the government’s stake in RBS rising even further. The chancellor said the sale of the Lloyds stake had raised £15.5bn for the taxpayer and 250,000 people had signed up on the government’s official website to register an interest in the sale. About £2bn of shares in Lloyds will be priced at a 5% discount to the market price and any investor who holds them for 12 months will be a given a bonus share for every 10 they hold. The sale is not expected until next spring. “I am determined to build on this success by making Lloyds shares available to the public next spring, so that we can build a share-owning democracy and continue to reduce our national debt,” said Osborne. While comparisons of previous sell-offs to the public remain tricky, around 54,000 investors expressed an interest in the Royal Mail sell-off during its registration period which lasted for 16 days. Investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown said on Thursday that so far 120,000 people had signed up with the company for the sale. The government has only just started selling off its stake in RBS, cutting it from 79% to around 73% in August, by selling shares to hedge funds and institutional investors. At the end of this month the next opportunity arises for Osborne to sell off another chunk of shares as the bank will report its third quarter results and the 90-day period preventing a further sale will have expired. RBS shares were trading at 334p around 10am in London, below the 502p at which the government breaks even on its stake. Lloyds shares were trading at 77p, above the 73.6p break-even point.
The UK government has sold off another 1% of its stake in Lloyds Banking Group, making its total interest in the lender to below 11%. In a statement on Friday, RBS said it was "disappointed" by the government's decision and would continue to work with the Treasury "to ensure that we can deliver our business plan for the future of Lloy@@