Lloyds Banking Group has offloaded its remaining 3.3% stake in asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen in a deal valued at £344m.
The transaction involved the disposal of 98 million shares at 352.5 pence per share.
“The holding supported the partnership agreements that were previously in place with Standard Life Aberdeen but given notice has been served for these agreements, and we are not a natural long term holder of equities, we have now made the decision to sell the stake,” Lloyds stated.
The sale follows Lloyds’ termination of Standard Life Aberdeen’s £109bn contract to manage Scottish Widows assets.
Lloyds said that the contract termination was due to competition issues created by Aberdeen’s merger with Standard Life in August 2017.
Standard Life Aberdeen will take a £40m impairment charge related to the cancellation of the contract. SLA has however, disputed the claims that it created competition issues.
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By GlobalDataThe deal to manage the Scottish Widows assets was secured by Aberdeen Asset Management in 2014, in turn offering Lloyds a 9.9% stake in Aberdeen. The deal also enabled Lloyds to scrap the contract in the event of Aberdeen merging with a material competitor.
The holding of Lloyds was reduced to 3.3% following the Standard Life-Aberdeen merger.