Private limited company | |
Industry | Financial |
Founded | 3 November 2008 |
Headquarters | 100 Parliament Street, London, SW1A 2BQ, United Kingdom |
Key people
|
James Leigh-Pemberton (Executive chairman) |
Products | Investment Management |
Services | Manages investments in: UK Asset Resolution Lloyds Banking Group (0.89%) RBS Group (73%) |
Owner | HM Treasury |
Parent | UK Government Investments |
Website | www |
UK Financial Investments (UKFI) is a limited company set up in November 2008 and mandated by the UK Government to manage HM Treasury's shareholdings in banks subscribing to its recapitalisation fund. These currently include a substantial holding in the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) and a minor holding in Lloyds Banking Group (Lloyds). It also previously owned Northern Rock until that company was taken over by Virgin Money on 1 January 2012.
UKFI also manages HM Treasury's investment in UK Asset Resolution which holds both NRAM plc and Bradford & Bingley.
On 3 November 2009, the government injected further capital into RBS in particular, which resulted in HM Treasury's shareholdings in that company rising from 70% to 83%. Since then, the proportion of those shareholdings have fallen slightly to 80%, as of end-March 2014, because of new issues of shares to other shareholders during the past few years. The government's stake had further decreased to 78.3% by August 2015. That month, UKFI disposed of 5.4% of their shareholding in RBS.
HM Treasury's shareholdings in Lloyds dropped from 43% to 41% in February 2010 after it issued 3.14 billion new shares, and dropped again in 2013 from 39% to 33% after it sold £3.2 billion worth of shares. A trading plan of incremental sales during 2015 reduced the stake to below 10% by the end of October. Sales resumed in November 2016, as the holding was reduced to 7.99%. By mid-March 2017, the holding was 2.95% and by late April it was just 0.89%.
In 2015 UKFI and the Shareholder Executive became subsidiaries of UK Government Investments and in April 2016 both were merged.
The government said the aim of the company would be to "protect and create value for the taxpayer as shareholder, with due regard to financial stability and acting in a way that promotes competition" while also ensuring that the banks they own provide "competitively priced" loans to small businesses and homeowners "at 2007 levels".
UKFI have holdings in the following companies: