UK bank Lloyds to float 25 per cent of TSB

Lloyds Banking Group, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, said it will sell a 25 percent stake in its TSB consumer bank in an initial public offering next month. The prospectus will be published in the middle of June, the London-based bank said in a statement.

Lloyds is required to sell its remaining stake in TSB, whose history dates back 200 years, by the end of 2015. “TSB has a national network of branches, a strong balance sheet and significant economic protection against legacy issues,” Lloyds chief executive officer Antonio Horta-Osorio said in the statement.

“It is already operating on the UK high street and is proving to be a strong and effective challenger.”

The European Commission ruled in 2009 that Lloyds should have to sell part of its business in response to its UK government bail-out of more than £20 billion. The bank won approval from European Union regulators on May 13th to scale back the amount of assets it has to sell. TSB has 4.5 million customers and 631 branches, the UK's seventh-largest network, Lloyds said.

Bloomberg