UK Conservatives plan to sell Lloyds shares to small investors - Sunday Telegraph

LONDON, April 18 (Reuters) - British finance minister George Osborne plans to sell government shares in Lloyds Banking Group to small investors at a discount of at least 5 percent if his Conservative Party win the May 7 election, The Sunday Telegraph reported on Saturday (Shenzhen: 002291.SZ - news) .

The Telegraph quoted Osborne as saying that a sale of Lloyds shares to small investors would give more people "a stake in our economy".

So far the government has sold Lloyds shares only to institutional investors. But The Sunday Telegraph said the government now wanted to raise 2-3 billion pounds by selling Lloyds shares to at least 200,000 individual investors.

Osborne said before that he aimed to raise at least 9 billion pounds ($13.5 billion) by selling more Lloyds shares before April 2016, on top of around 9 billion pounds worth already sold. ($1 = 0.6685 pounds) (Reporting by David Milliken; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)