British government sells RBS shares at loss of £1bn to taxpayer

The move has reduced the Government’s stake in the group from 78.3% to around 72.9%.

The British Treasury has sold the first tranche of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland for £2.1 billion, but the taxpayer has made a loss of around £1 billion on the sale.

UK Financial Investments, the body that holds the Government’s RBS stake, said it had offloaded 5.4% of RBS at 330p a share – far short of the 502p price paid by the Government when it bailed out the bank at the height of the financial crisis.