The UK government has reduced its stake in Lloyds Banking Group to just below 5% as it aims to return the bank to full private ownership in the next few months.
UK Financial Investments Limited (UKFI), which manages the government's stake, resumed share sales in October, having halted them for almost a year due to market turbulence.
UKFI said it had reduced its stake by about 1% to 4.998% in an announcement this morning.
The UK government was left with a 43% stake in Lloyds after a £20.5 billion taxpayer-funded bailout during the 2007-09 financial crisis.
Even though the government is now selling the shares at below the average price it paid for them it has so far received about £18.5 billion back.
UKFI is selling about 1% of the bank's shares on average about every three weeks. This means at the current rate the bank should be fully returned to private ownership by around May.
The slump in Lloyds shares at the start of last year forced the government to postpone a plan to offer cut-price shares to the public.
The new Conservative government has signalled that it will call off that plan entirely.
Lloyds has been trying to put its crisis-ridden past behind it.
Last month the bank said it would it would spend £1.9 billion buying MBNA, a UK credit card business from Bank of America in its first major acquisition since its bailout.
