Bank sell-off
Treasury plans to sell £25 billion of RBS shares
The Treasury plans to sell £25 billion of shares in Royal Bank of Scotland over the parliament, documents with the Statement reveal.
A further £5.8bn will be raised in 2020-21 when he UK government hopes it will exit the bank which received £45 billion in rescue funds in 2008.
In August, the government raised £2.1bn with an initial sale of shares in RBS, which is now 72.9% owned the taxpayer.
The document also reveal that the government will offer shares in fellow bailed-out lender Lloyds Banking Group to the public in the spring in what is likely to signal the end of the taxpayers’ holding.
Some £16bn has been recovered for the taxpayer through the government’s programme of LBG disposals, generating a surplus of £1.2bn compared with the original investment price and reducing the taxpayer’s stake to under 10%.
UK Asset Resolution, the company that was set up to oversee the taxpayer’s investments in the bailed-out lenders Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, recently sold a £13bn portfolio of mortgages that were originally loaned to homebuyers by Northern Rock.
