A day after it unveiled its best annual results for over a decade, Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LON:LLOY) has revealed that the UK taxpayers’s stake in the lender has now fallen below 4%.
UK Financial Investments, which manages the government's stakes in bailed-out lenders, has reduced its holding in Lloyds to 3.89% following further share sales.
The UK Treasury’s shareholding is now approximately 2.76bn shares, down from the 3.57bn shares it held when it last disposed of a tranche at the end of January.
The price at which the shares were sold was not disclosed. In early trading, Lloyds’ shares on the FTSE 100 index were up 0.5%, or 0.38p at 70.08p, having gained over 4% yesterday.
UKFI resumed the sale of shares in Lloyds last October, having halted them almost a year earlier because of stock market turbulence.
Sell in May …
At the current sell down rate, analysts estimate that Lloyds should be fully returned to private ownership by May.
Lloyds was rescued with a £20.5bln bailout during the 2007-09 financial crisis, which left the taxpayer owning 43% of the bank.
Yesterday the bank posted its highest profit since before the global financial crisis and announced a special dividend as provisions for the payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling scandal were slashed.
READ: Lloyds 2016 results rise …
Lloyds’ statutory pre-tax profit was £4.2bn for the year to December 31 2016, more than double the £1.6bn recorded a year earlier.
The FTSE 100-listed lender raised its total ordinary dividend 13% to 2.55p from 2.25p and recommended a special dividend of 0.5p per share.
Investors had speculated the special dividend would be scrapped given Lloyds is spending £1.9bn on buying MBNA’s credit card business.