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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/government-to-sell-off-rbs-shares.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="RBS chief executive Stephen Hester is expected to say the group is on the road to recovery when he unveils its annual results" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/min-government-to-sell-off-rbs-shares.jpg" alt="RBS chief executive Stephen Hester is expected to say the group is on the road to recovery when he unveils its annual results"/></a></p>
<p>Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to indicate this week that the Government will begin to sell off its stake in the group before the end of the year.</p>
<p>Stephen Hester, chief executive of the bank in which the taxpayer has an 83% holding, is expected to say the group is on the road to recovery when he unveils its annual results on Thursday, paving the way for a sale of the Government&#8217;s shares, according to the Sunday Times.</p>
<p>RBS is still expected to be in the red, with analysts predicting a pre-tax loss of £613 million for 2010, but this is a marked improvement on the £3.6 billion loss recorded for the previous year.</p>
<p>The group is also expected to write off another £9 billion in bad debt as a result of its exposure to the troubled Irish economy through its Ulster Bank subsidiary, although this too is down on the £13.9 billion it wrote off in 2009.</p>
<p>It is thought that UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the government body that looks after taxpayers&#8217; interests in the part-nationalised banks, will try to sell a small part of its holding later this year on the back of the improved result.</p>
<p>It has been suggested that it may try to offload small parcels of the bank&#8217;s shares at a low price to test market appetite for the stock. Selling just a 5% stake in the group at the current share price of 48.53p would bring in £1.4 billion for the Treasury.</p>
<p>But UKFI has to sell the holding at more than 50p a share if the Government is to make a profit from the bail-out of the bank.</p>
<p>RBS and fellow part-nationalised bank Lloyds Banking Group are both thought to have held meetings with sovereign wealth funds in recent months in a bid to drum up interest in their shares.</p>
<p>But it is thought that any sale of the Government&#8217;s stake could be difficult to achieve until Sir John Vickers, chairman of the Independent Commission on Banking, has produced his final report on whether the UK&#8217;s banks should be broken up. His initial report is due in April.</p>
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