RBS shares sold, why couldn't we buy them?

[Cyclone]

I assume poppet is too busy to reply as she is now a majority share holder of RBS, having bought them at todays discount price on the stockmarket.

[Vague_Boy]

No you can't, they were sold overnight

 

There's more than one way to buy RBS shares y'know, and more than one source.

 

You have had the ability to buy RBS shares for decades. There's not just the one block of shares that's just been sold.

 

But the public, who owned them should have been given the opportunity to buy them first.

 

So you want to buy shares you already "own"?

 

Please PM me, I have some swamp land in Florida you might be interested in. Plus a bridge in London (only one previous owner).

 

Anyhoo, back to the story.

 

The Government bought shares at a price of just over 500p per share, but after the crisis hit, the share price dropped to historical lows of 90p. MPs previously thought it made sense to wait until the share price had recovered before selling the shares again.

 

However, the sale does crystalise a loss of £1.1bn for the Treasury as the shares were sold at a price 34pc below the level at which the government bought the stock.

 

So either the government hangs on to their shares until the price (some day) returns to what it was 7 years ago or they start selling them at the current market price.

 

They can't sell them now at 500p a share when the other RBS shares out there are selling for way less. Who would buy them?

 

It's like me saying "please buy my flat screen TV that I paid £1000 for last year" when the same model can now be found in shops at £800. Only a complete fool (no offense) would close a deal like that.

[Eater Sundae]

To answer the actual question in the thread title.

 

it is much easier (and therefore a lot cheaper) to manage the proposed little dribbles of shares by this method that by going through the whole Tell Sid method. The government has clearly set out to sell the shares. As there are already shares on the open market, there is a known share value. if the government sell too many at once, it will devalue the shares value. All they can therefore do is to sell off a small amount, wait for the shares to stabilize, then sell a few more.

 

As an aside, the whole "cost the taxpayers £2 billion" being put about by Labour is totally disingenuous. The shares are worth what the market will pay. Maybe the people to blame are the previous labour government who appear to have paid too much for them.

[WageSlave]

George Osborne has sold some of those RSB shares. They were sold to an American bank.

As owners of these shares, why weren't we given the opportunity to buy them?

 

There was nothing stopping you buying shares in RBS yesterday or last week, you could have purchased some today, you can also buy some tomorrow.

[Berberis]

George Osborne has sold some of those RSB shares. They were sold to an American bank.

As owners of these shares, why weren't we given the opportunity to buy them?

 

Because of the costs to the government to sell the shares in small quantities.

 

The shares were sold wholesale, in the same way your local shop buys the items it sells to you.

 

Your complaint could also be applied to the cost of banana's. Tesco, for example, pay less then you do, but they buy millions of pounds worth at a time. If you had the funds you could have bought the shares from the government instead of this American bank (whose origin I fail to see as an issue).

 

The cost to sell off these shares in small quantities would have cost the government a lot more as a broker or a number of brokers would have been involved and they would have taken a fee too.

[drummonds]

George Osborne has sold some of those RSB shares. They were sold to an American bank.

As owners of these shares, why weren't we given the opportunity to buy them?

 

they have been trading on the stock market continuously. you can buy them today if you want to which is hardlines as you didn't want to buy any or hear that your thread is an absolute nonsense

 

---------- Post added 05-08-2015 at 14:36 ----------

 

No you can't, they were sold overnight, then it was announced that they were sold, AFTER the deed was done.

 

Sure, anyone can buy them NOW, from those banks who are now selling them on, at a profit. But the public, who owned them should have been given the opportunity to buy them first.

 

they are a listed share. they sell on the markets at the listed price. you could have bought last year, last month, last week or yesterday. you can buy today or tommorow. perhaps you should learn the facts before launching an ill-informed thread.

 

---------- Post added 05-08-2015 at 14:43 ----------

 

To answer the actual question in the thread title.

 

it is much easier (and therefore a lot cheaper) to manage the proposed little dribbles of shares by this method that by going through the whole Tell Sid method. The government has clearly set out to sell the shares. As there are already shares on the open market, there is a known share value. if the government sell too many at once, it will devalue the shares value. All they can therefore do is to sell off a small amount, wait for the shares to stabilize, then sell a few more.

 

As an aside, the whole "cost the taxpayers £2 billion" being put about by Labour is totally disingenuous. The shares are worth what the market will pay. Maybe the people to blame are the previous labour government who appear to have paid too much for them.

 

 

or labour paid too much for shares in a bank that was dead in the water as the markets say that the shares are not worth what brown handed over for them now that it isn't.

Edited August 5, 2015 by drummonds

[truman]

Because we are only allowed the crumbs at the table, not the feast.

 

You could have bought RBS shares anytime....

[drummonds]

You could have bought RBS shares anytime....

 

indeed we could. rbs shares have have traded daily for the last few months at between 360 and 330 pence per share. yesterday for example the shares were trading between 336 and 330 pence per share. which is the price the government sold for. so if the op had actually wanted to buy rbs shares at the price the government sold for (330 pence)they merely had to ring their broker.

 

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=RBS.L

 

anyone could have bought them at anytime they chose.

 

the question we have to ask is, if now the bank is not on the verge of collapse and its shares are worth between 330 and 360 pence. why did bone head brown pay 500p per share when the bank was verging on total collapse.

Edited August 5, 2015 by drummonds

[RonJeremy]

The price paid by "Bone Head" is largely irrelevant, because he did it to prop up the bank and help save people who had funds with the bank and small businesses who also had money with them. The UK economy would have been in a pitiful state had he not done this.

 

As for selling them at the current market price - well that's been totally covered by the people on here such Truman, Berberis, vaguey etc etc. . Mischief making by the lefties on here is no substitute for the truth

[I1L2T3]

To be fair if the predictions of a worsening of the financial crisis come true then this could be a good bit of business.