Bulletin: Potential Sale Of TSB Stake To Sabadell Has No Rating Impact On Lloyds Banking Group And Subsidiaries

LONDON (Standard&Poor's) March 19, 2015--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that Lloyds Banking Group's (Lloyds') possible sale of its 50% stake in TSB Banking Group plc to Banco de Sabadell, S.A., in line with the terms of Sabadell's preliminary offer, has no impact on our issuer credit ratings on Lloyds or its rated subsidiaries. In our view, Lloyds' management team has long been clear that it seeks to sell the group's remaining stake in this non-core business during 2015. In view of TSB's modest size in the context of Lloyds, we consider the future divestment of TSB to be of marginal importance to Lloyds' earnings and franchise in the U.K. TSB generated £170 million of pretax profits

...LONDON (Standard & Poor's) March 19, 2015--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that Lloyds Banking Group's (Lloyds') possible sale of its 50% stake in TSB Banking Group plc to Banco de Sabadell, S.A., in line with the terms of Sabadell's preliminary offer, has no impact on our issuer credit ratings on Lloyds or its rated subsidiaries. In our view, Lloyds' management team has long been clear that it seeks to sell the group's remaining stake in this non-core business during 2015. In view of TSB's modest size in the context of Lloyds, we consider the future divestment of TSB to be of marginal importance to Lloyds' earnings and franchise in the U.K. TSB generated ú170 million of pretax profits for Lloyds in 2014, after taking into account dual running costs absorbed by Lloyds, and accounted for ú5.2 billion of Lloyds' risk-weighted assets at end-2014. Lloyds reported ú7.8 billion underlying pretax profit for 2014 and ú240 billion of regulatory risk-weighted assets at year-end. The...

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