UK to launch Lloyds retail share sale in next 12 months

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said it will launch a sale of shares in Lloyds to private retail investors in the NEXT (NXT.LO)12 months and has extended a facility enabling it to sell more shares in the bank to financial institutions.

The sale is expected to be the biggest privatization since the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government sold 3.9 billion pounds of shares in British Telecom and 5.6 billion pounds worth of British Gas shares.

As well as raising money for Britain's finance ministry, those sales aimed to encourage ordinary Britons to invest in the stock market, an aspiration shared by the current Conservative government.

Lloyds was bailed out at a cost to taxpayers of 20 billion pounds ($31 billion) during the 2007-9 financial crisis, leaving the government holding a 41 percent stake in the bank.

The government has now sold more than half of its stake in the bank, taking its shareholding to below 19 percent.

UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which manages the government's stakes in bailed-out banks, also said it had extended a 'trading plan' that allows Morgan Stanley to sell Lloyds shares beyond its current June 30 deadline until the end of the year.

It has so far raised 3.5 billion pounds through the plan since it was launched last December, bringing the total raised from the sale of Lloyds shares to 10.5 billion pounds.

Shares have been sold through the plan at an average of more than 80 pence, well above the government's average 73.6 pence buy-in price. Lloyds shares traded 0.4 percent higher at 88.15 pence at 0710 GMT.

"We're determined to get on with the job of returning Lloyds to private ownership. That's why I'm extending the plan for six months so that we can make even more progress in returning money to the taxpayer and paying down the national debt," said Finance Minister George Osborne.

The government's remaining stake in the bank is worth about 12 billion pounds at current share prices. It is expected to offer several billion pounds worth of Lloyds shares to private retail investors which, in addition to the shares sold through the trading plan, should enable a full exit in the next year.

Osborne said during the campaign for Britain's national election last month that he would look to sell part of the government's remaining 20 percent stake to private investors if the Conservative Party won.

Under its Portuguese Chief Executive Antonio Horta-Osorio Lloyds has returned to profit, enabling it to pay its first dividend for six-and-a-half years earlier this year.

($1 = 0.6539 pounds)

(Reporting by Matt Scuffham; Editing by Sinead Cruise and Keith Weir)

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