Government loans to Lloyds reach total of £165 million in last year

Published on Sunday 8 November 2009 19:03

LLOYDS Banking Group has had £165 billion of loans and guarantees in place from the government and the Bank of England to help it weather the financial turbulence in the sector from 2008 onwards, it has emerged.

The figure, relating partly to the so-called Special Liquidity Scheme, is in the prospectus for Lloyds's 21bn fund-raising, which was announced last week.

Lloyds says in the document that the "significant outstanding collaterallised borrowings" also related to the government's Credit Guarantee Scheme, which offers guarantees for banks to secure commercial loans.

Most UK banks were known by the City to have availed themselves of large amounts of the state funding during the banking sector's collapse in 2008, including profitable groups like Barclays.

But the scale of the state aid used by, or available to, individual banks has largely been kept private by central banks and the borrowers themselves.

The SLS was introduced by the Bank of England in April 2008 and closed for new transactions in January 2009.

The CGS was created by the Treasury in October 2008, and closes for new issuance in December 2009.