Lloyds details £13bn rights issue
Updated on 24 November 2009
To avoid being forced into a government scheme to insure assets, the Lloyds Banking Group is raising money by issuing shares and selling them at a discount to shareholders.
Existing shareholders are being given the chance to buy new shares at 37p - a hefty discount on the 91p closing price last night.
To maintain their stake, the average private shareholder will have to stump up £336 to take part.
But the government is still the bank's biggest single investor, so where does this leave taxpayers?
Paul Kavanagh of stockbrokers Killick and Co spoke to Channel 4 News about the fund-raiser.
"The first thing is that we don't have this contingent liability over our heads," he said
"If we go back to the earlier part of this year when the government put this asset protection scheme into place, Lloyds were looking at possibly transferring possibly £260bn of their balance sheet over to this government scheme. And it is these losses that people were most fearing.
"Life has gone on over the past few months, more diligence about Lloyds balance sheet and generally a pick up in stock markets valuations, a pick up in house prices and also a pick up in commercial property prices has meant that the back drop is a lot better now.
"And the effect of that, of course, is that the private sector is back to possibly participate a rights issues and relieve the government of that duty.
"For existing investors I think they have very little choice but to participate in that they are cheap shares – the share price will adjust down a little but later this week but it is being priced to sell.
"Is it the end? Well let's hope so.
"I think the economy is in a much more stabilised condition at the moment. I think given the amount of work that has gone on over the last six months to fully analyse and stress test this balance sheet of Lloyds, and other bank groups, I think it would be a surprise if we would require any further funding at the moment.
"But that doesn't obviously avoid the need if the world was to take a sharp downturn from here – but not expected."
