Lloyds shares to be sold off

The UK Treasury yesterday announced its intention to sell at least £2bn worth of shares in Lloyds Banking Group to private retail investors in spring 2016 to return the bank to full private ownership.

The sale is set to be the biggest privatisation in Britain since the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government sold £3.9bn worth of shares in British Telecom and £5.6bn worth of British Gas shares.

As well as raising money to pay down Britain’s debt, those sales aimed to encourage ordinary Britons to invest in the stock market, an aspiration shared by the current Conservative government, which gathered for its annual party conference in Manchester on Sunday.