TSB announces share flotation price range

Shares in TSB will be sold at between 220p and 290p when the bank floats on the stock market later this month.

Lloyds Banking Group is floating 25% of TSB, with small investors being offered free shares in the newly-listed bank.

Investors will get one free share for every 20 shares they buy (up to the value of £2,000) and hold for a period of one year after the flotation.

At the mid-point of the pricing range, TSB would be worth about £1.275bn when it joins the London stock market.

Lloyds said in a statement that the final price of the shares was expected to be announced on or around 24 June, with conditional dealings in the shares starting on the same day.

TSB has 631 branches and 4.5 million retail customers, making it the seventh largest retail bank in the UK.

Forced sale

Several companies have joined - or announced plans to join - the stock market in recent weeks, and there has been much debate about whether investors still have a strong appetite to buy shares in new listings.

Clothing chain Fat Face pulled its planned London listing last month, while shares in insurance-to-holidays firm Saga have fallen below their listing price.

A share price of 255p, the mid-point of the proposed price range, values the lender at less than its book value of about £1.5bn - the net value of its assets - said Oriel Securities analyst Vivek Raja.

This could be because the package of loans TSB would receive from Lloyds to start it off might be less profitable than the industry average, he added.

TSB is being floated to meet European Union rules on state aid. Lloyds was bailed out by the UK taxpayer in 2008, but had to scale back its size as part of the rescue.

The Co-operative Bank was set to buy TSB, but the proposed deal collapsed after it emerged that the Co-op Bank had a £1.5bn hole in its finances.

Even if Lloyds' prices TSB shares at the lower end of the range, the public share sale will still raise more than the £750m it would have received from selling it to Co-op Bank.

Lloyds must sell its remaining stake in TSB before the end of 2015. Part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland sold its Direct Line insurance business in stages, with each tranche priced higher than the previous sale.