Lloyds

The government will sell shares worth at least £2bn in Lloyds to investors in a share sale that will be launched next spring.

It will offer a discount of 5% of the market price to members of the public who will participate in share purchase.

An additional bonus share for every ten shares will be offered to those who hold their investment for more than a year.

People applying for investments of less than £1,000 will be prioritized.

Upon completion of the sale, the proceeds will be used to pay the national debt.

UK Finance Minister George Osborne was quoted by Sky News as saying: "This final sale will be the biggest privatization 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."

The government had bought around 41% stake in the bank during the financial crisis of 2007-09 for around £20.5bn.

The UK Financial Investments that manages the government’s stake in bailed-out banks has been slowly trying to recover the money by working on decreasing the government’s ownership in the bank since 2013.

In August this year, the government sold 1% of its stake in Lloyds, bringing its share to less than 13% in the bank, taking the total sum recovered by the taxpayer to £14.5bn.

Image: The government had put in £20.5bn in the bank to bail it out during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Photo: courtesy of Lloyds Banking Group.