Watershed in Lloyds’ recovery marked by £20m boardroom bonus haul

Lloyds Banking Group’s army of small shareholders will have cause to celebrate on Friday as the bailed-out bank is expected to resume dividend payments for the first time since the financial crisis.

At 1p a share, or perhaps just 0.5p, it won’t be a windfall for Lloyds’ long-suffering investors – in 2007, for example, the last year for which it paid a full dividend, they received 35.9p a share.

But the token payment marks a watershed in the recovery of the bank after its rescue by the government with £20 billion of taxpayers’ cash seven years ago.

With three million private investors, Lloyds has one of the biggest shareholder registers in Europe, a legacy of its history as one of the highest yielding stocks in the London market. Once dividend payments are resumed, investors will be hoping for a rapid return to that status, and will be eager to hear what the bank has to say on Friday about the progress of future payments.

The return to the dividend lists should be good news for the shares as it will increase demand for the stock from income funds, traditionally big investors in the banking sector.

Rehabilitation

Another step in the bank’s rehabilitation was seen on Monday when the UK government sold off another £500 million chunk of its shares, taking its stake down by 1 per cent to 23.9 per cent. At its peak the taxpayer shareholding in Lloyds was 43 per cent.

The selloffs started in late 2013, when the government finally broke even on its investment in the bank. The latest tranche of shares was also sold above the average 73.6p originally paid by the taxpayer, and takes to just under £8 billion the amount raised by the sales so far.

Chancellor George Osborne has said further small tranches of shares will continue to be sold into the market over the next few months.

Resumption of the dividend will bring a further boost to the treasury’s coffers – if the payment is declared at 1p a share the government will be in line to collect £178 million on its stake. Again, it’s hardly a windfall, but a useful infusion of funds ahead of a general election.

This is the banking sector, though, so there will be windfalls on Friday if not for shareholders or the government then for the bank’s senior management.

Chief executive António Horta-Osório stands to collect a bonus of around £7 million, reflecting the doubling of the share price since his performance package was agreed three years ago. Other board members will also receive big payouts, with the total boardroom bonus haul expected to top £20 million.

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The City of London’s skyline has been transformed in recent years with the construction of a series of ever more dramatic buildings, leapfrogging each other to claim the title of the tallest tower in the capital . . . and the silliest name. Since the distinctive design of the Gherkin made it one of London’s most instantly recognisable landmarks on completion over 20 years ago, it’s become something of a tradition to nickname new skyscrapers.

The Cheesegrater

While it might baffle tourists, most Londoners can identify the Shard, just across the river from the Square Mile at London Bridge, the Cheesegrater on Leadenhall Street, and the Walkie-Talkie on Fenchurch Street.

And then there’s the Stump. Not quite the name the developers had dreamed of for their building on Bishopsgate, but a cruelly accurate description of the unfinished state in which it has languished for the past three years, with just the core of the first seven of its ambitious 64 floors completed.

Now the French insurance firm Axa is stepping in to bring the tower back to life, buying the project from its Middle Eastern owners in a £300 million deal. While the building will be four floors shorter than the original plan, at 60 storeys, it is still expected to take the title of the tallest building in the Square Mile.

But the tower will lose the nickname it was given before it became the Stump. Thanks to the distinctive twisting, curved glass design at the top of the building, the original design had been dubbed the Helter-Skelter. Now those dramatic touches have been dropped in an effort to cut down on costs and the building is likely to be known simply by its address – No 22, Bishopsgate – when construction is completed, probably in 2018. It might not be very imaginative but at least it’s better than the Stump.

Fiona Walsh is business editor of theguardian.com