Insurance: Lloyds bails out of esure for better than book value
Lloyds Banking Group has sold its interest in esure to its chairman and founder Peter Woods. Miraculously, the sale price is "slightly more" than the book value.
Lloyds owned 70% of esure which had carved out a niche as a home and car insurance broker - but it got the business as part of the Halifax package deal and didn't really want it.
It's all pretty incestuous stuff: Peter Woods once created an insurance company called Direct Line (the one with the infuriating but extraordinarily memorable red telephone on wheels in its adverts). That was in conjunction with Royal Bank of Scotland.
The purchase is supported by Tosca Penta Investments, backed by Toscafund where the chairman is George Mathewson - who is a former chairman of RBS.
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