iSoft brings Lloyds TSB a healthy £37m

Lloyd’s TSB Development Capital, the private equity arm of Lloyd’s TSB, is expected to sell shares it owns in iSoft for about £37m.

Lloyds holds about 18.5m shares in iSoft and is expected to sell about 12m of these later this month when iSoft offers 27.2 million additional shares to the buy side. Lloyds have agreed not to sell the balance of shares until after iSoft's interim announcement at the end of October.

Lloyds initially invested £6.7m in iSoft in 1999, and realised a profit of about £16m after the company’s IPO through redeeming ordinary and preference shares it had acquired in iSoft.

Such healthy profits buck the trend in the TMT sector as private equity firms have found it increasingly difficult to exit as stock markets have slumped.