LONDON: Britain's finance ministry said it will sell at least 2 billion pounds ($3 billion) worth of shares in Lloyds Banking Group to private retail investors in spring 2016 to return the bank to full private ownership.
The sale is set to be the biggest privatisation in Britain since the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher's government sold 3.9 billion pounds worth of shares in British Telecom and 5.6 billion pounds worth of British Gas shares.
As well as raising money to pay down Britain's debt, those sales aimed to encourage ordinary Britons to invest in the stock market, an aspiration shared by the current Conservative government, which gathered for its annual party conference in Manchester on Sunday.
"This final sale will be the biggest privatisation in over 20 years and I don't want all those shares to go to City institutions.
I want them to go to members of the public," finance minister George Osborne told Sky News on Monday.
Market sources said the shares are likely to be attractive to retail investors because of the high dividend yield they are expected to offer in the coming years.
The bank was one of the biggest dividend payers in the FTSE-100 before its 20.5 billion pound taxpayer-funded bailout during the 2007/09 financial crisis, which left the government holding a 43 percent stake.
Lloyds, which already has more retail investors than any other stock in Britain's FTSE-100 index, paid its first dividend since its bailout earlier this year and is expected to ramp up payouts over the next 2 to 3 years.
"The buoyant interest in this share sale will only now accelerate with the terms finally on the table," said Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, which has 727,000 private clients.
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