U. K. Government Sells Final Stake in Lloyds Banking Group -
By CHAD BRAYMAY 17, 2017
LONDON — Nearly nine years after a government bailout during the financial crisis, the Lloyds Banking Group is fully private again.
Lloyds — one of Britain’s four largest lenders — said on Wednesday
that it had returned to private ownership after the British government sold its final stake.
The bank was forced to take its bailout from the government in 2008 after a poorly timed acquisition of
the mortgage lender HBOS, the operator of Halifax and Bank of Scotland, as the financial crisis hit.
The bank has set aside more than £17 billion to compensate people who were improperly sold the insurance,
and it was fined £117 million in June 2015 for its handling of customer complaints related to the product.
Mr. Horta-Osório has called payment protection insurance the lender’s biggest “legacy issue.”
But a deadline of August 2019 for making new complaints may allow Lloyds
and the rest of the British banking industry to finally move past that scandal.