Member Article

TSB in bid for £1.5 billion taxpayer-owned mortgage portfolio weeks after being listed

TSB Banking Group, which has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since last month, is planning a bid for a £1.5 billion taxpayer-owned mortgage portfolio.

Sky News reported that TSB’s chief executive Paul Pester is interested in acquiring the residential loan book from UK Asset Resolution, the Government’s ‘zombie bank’, which was put up for sale last month, and is responsible for the winding down the loans of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

In June, UKAR said it had begun the potential sale of a portfolio of residential mortgages but said it would only complete the transaction if the price represented value to the taxpayer.

TSB has 631 branches and about 4.5 million customers and is majority-owned by Lloyds Banking Group, which itself is 25%-owned by UK taxpayers.

TSB was originally going to be sold to the Co-operative Group prior to the emergence of a £1.5 billion black hole on the mutually owned bank’s balance sheet.

The British government has a 100% shareholding in UKAR Limited, which supports around 467,000 customers with 61.2 billion pounds worth of loans.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .