Government sells Bradford & Bingley loans for £11.8bn to Prudential and Blackstone after a “highly competitive sale process” | City A.M.
The government has sold £11.8bn of Bradford & Bingley loans to insurance giant Prudential and US private equity behemoth Blackstone.
The loans were bought by the UK taxpayer during the financial crisis and have been managed by the UK Asset Resolution (UKAR) on their behalf.
Prudential and Blackstone prevailed in what the Treasury called a “highly competitive sale process”. The precise split between the two has not been disclosed but the US fund has a larges share of the mortgages
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Today’s sale means UKAR has now £22bn of loans left to manage and potentially sell, down from £116bn in 2010.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said: “The sale of these Bradford & Bingley assets for £11.8bn marks another major milestone in our plan to get taxpayers’ money back following the financial crisis.”
We are determined to return the financial assets we own to the private sector and today’s sale is further proof of the confidence investors have in the UK economy.
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The government added the portfolio of loans had “strong credit quality” and the price achieved reflected this.
The loans were sold for more than the value at which the government had marked them at. But this value was less than the “book value”, in other words the par amount of the loans.