Lloyds halfway out of bailout with £10bn sale May 12, 2015 More than half of the government’s stake in Lloyds has now been sold back to private investors, raising more than £10bn for the Treasury so far, the government announced yesterday. The latest sale of £500m of shares takes the taxpayer’s stake to below 20 per cent, compared with 41 per cent when the bailout [...]
The government has just sold off more Lloyds shares May 12, 2015 After being in government for just a few days, the Tories have sold another load of shares in taxpayer-backed Lloyds, reducing its stake in the bank to less than 20 per cent. It sold £500m shares in Lloyds under a trading plan to gradually sell off shares, that was first outlined in December. And this means [...]
Lloyds Bank profit increase pushes share price up, despite £660m loss over TSB sale May 1, 2015 The sale of TSB has come at a big price for Lloyds, but investors are undeterred. The figures Lloyds share price has gone up 3.38 per cent, after underlying pre-tax profit rose 21 per cent and beat analyst expectations. Lloyds Bank statutory profit before tax slipped 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, falling to [...]
UK’s big four banks face £19bn more in conduct fines April 27, 2015 Legal and compensation payouts are set to cost the big four UK banks another £19bn over 2015 and 2016, analysts at credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s said yesterday. Mounting bills come on top of the £42bn the four have already paid out over the past five years. The next nine largest lenders paid a further £6bn [...]
Vince Cable warns of potential hiccup in Lloyds Bank shares sell-off April 20, 2015 A competition enquiry could upset Conservative party plans to sell billions of pounds of Lloyds Banking Group shares to the public by May 2016, Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable said yesterday. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to publish its final report on the personal current accounts and small business banking markets [...]
Beware, Sid – Lloyds sale could be tricky April 19, 2015 A big retail offering of Lloyds shares is on the cards. Large-scale privatisation is back. David Cameron is promising a £4bn sale of Lloyds shares to retail customers, swapping one big government shareholder for thousands of individuals. An instant comparison is with the 1980s. Giant firms like BT, BP and British Gas were taken out [...]
General Election 2015: Labour’s non-dom tax change would hit some of UK’s biggest banks April 12, 2015 Labour's pledge to scrap non-dom tax status would affect top employees at some of London’s leading banks, including RBS, Lloyds and Barclays. Under the non-domicile rule, those with a permanent home abroad currently do not have to pay UK tax on overseas earnings. Only their UK income is taxed, although they have to pay £30,000 [...]
Bank of England stress test: British lenders assessed against global economic crunch March 30, 2015 Britain's biggest banks have to prove they could withstand a global economic crunch, under a stress test unveiled by the Bank of England yesterday. The fictional scenario is based on real fears that a slowdown in China and renewed recession in Europe could hit the UK economy and its banks. The six biggest banks [...]
Lean premiums ebb earnings at Lloyd’s of London March 26, 2015 Lloyd’s of London profits dipped slightly last year after gross premiums written at the iconic institution fell. Pre-tax profits fell by £44m to £3.2bn for the year ending 2014, after premiums fell to £25.3bn from £25.6bn in the previous year. Overall profitability measures at the group also weakened, rising to a combined ratio of 88.1 [...]
Banks are back: How the UK’s banking sector got its mojo back as dividend payments rise March 26, 2015 The UK’s banks are back on form and could be the best place to invest for good and growing dividends. British banks such as Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays were once the best places to invest for solid dividends. Ten years ago, banks provided a quarter of all dividends in the UK market, according to figures [...]