Britain sells stake in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Reuters informs with reference to Sky News. Stake equal to 10% could be sold as early as this week.

UK government still has 71% of bank after in provided financial support to the bank during economic crisis.

Value of stake for sale is at least 3 billion pounds. On Friday RBS shares closed a little bit lower than 290 pence. It is slightly higher than half of 502 pence that government paid for them. So, the Treasury will lose billions of pounds as a result of this deal.

Britain government invested 45,5 billion pounds into RBS in the middle of financial crisis. It failed to return this money back due to shares drop, regulatory investigations in the US and Brexit.

In November UK informed about sale of RBS shares amounted to 15 billion pounds during next five years.

During crisis government supported RBS and Lloyd. It sold remaining stake in Lloyd last year.