The paper said the planned sale of about £2.5 billion, or 6%, of the bank’s shares may be announced after the market closes, with investors signed up overnight and the result announced on Tuesday, although it was noted the timing could slip until later in the week.
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The announcement, made after the stock market had closed, came from UK Financial Investments, the body which looks after the taxpayer stakes in the bailed out banks.
Lloyds was rescued at a cost of 20.5 billion pounds ($32.03 billion) to taxpayers during the 2007-9 financial crisis.
It is expected that the government will take a loss on the £2bn sale.
At a closing price of 341 pence on Friday for RBS shares, the government stake is worth approximately £31 billion, which indicates a potential loss of over £14 billion for the entire stake.
UKFI and the Treasury said they would not sell any more RBS shares for 90 days after the sale without the consent of the bookrunners.
The UK government could kick-start the sell-off of its 79 per cent stake in rescued lender RBS within the next two weeks, and potentially as early as today, according to press reports. “We don’t know what the price is yet”, he said Monday evening. But Lloyds’ share price has recovered to the 73.6p that the state paid for its stake and it has been selling that stake down for the past two years at a small profit.
The spokesman said Mr Osborne’s focus was on “getting the best value for the taxpayer, maximising support for the economy and restoring them to private ownership”.
UKFI plans to sell about three-quarters of its holding in RBS by the end of this current five-year parliament.
When contacted by This is Money, UKFI declined to comment on the reports regarding the possible RBS stake move. The United Kingdom government hired investment bank Rothschild to review the pros and cons of selling RBS shares below the buy-in price.
Last week, RBS unveiled a half-year loss after taking a string of charges for mis-selling and restructuring, and signalled that dividend payments would not restart until 2017 at the earliest.
Elsewhere, the Government confirmed it has sold a further 1% stake in Lloyds Banking Group, reducing its total holdings to 13.99%.
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The bank faces further fines for “conduct issues of the past”, with RBS braced for settlement costs in the US related to mortgage backed securities, which have battered many of its rivals in America over the past couple of years.
