Lord Davies leads consortium to buy government's stake in Lloyds Lord Davies, the former trade minister, is leading a consortium of investors to buy the majority of the government's 39 per cent stake in Lloyds Banking Group. The former chairman of Standard Chartered has spent much of the past year putting together a potential consortium that could take a significant chunk of the taxpayer's holding, said people familiar with the initiative. It comes as the deadline for investment banks to submit their bids to handle the sales of Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland closes. Investment banks have until Monday to send their proposal to the UK Financial Investments, the Treasury arm that manages the government's stakes in the banks. The consortium is led by Corsair - the US private equity company whose European operations are headed by Lord Davies - and comprises a number of other global asset management companies. Details of the bid are unclear but Lord Davies is understood to have come up with a structure that would allow the government to continue to benefit from some of the potential upside in Lloyds" performance even after it sells its stake. Lord Davies and Lloyds declined to comment. The Treasury is likely to welcome any creative ideas for returning its stake to the private sector. The more buzz there is around the idea of Lloyds" reprivatisation the greater the potential uplift in the bank's share price. Temasek, Singapore's wealth fund, is also considering investing in Lloyds but this is believed to be less likely, said people familiar with the situation. The timetable for returning Lloyds to full private ownership has been the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks. Last month, George Osborne, the chancellor, said in his Mansion House speech that the Treasury was "actively considering options" for a sale of its shares in the bank. He did not set out a timetable for this process, but said he envisaged an initial placing of shares with institutional investors and potentially a retail offering to the public later on. Lord Davies already heads up one of the City factions battling to win control of 315 RBS branches that the bank must divest. He has lined up a consortium which includes private equity groups Corsair and Centerbridge, as well as Standard Life and Lord Rothschild's RIT Capital. Last month the group also secured the support of the Church Commissioners, the investment arm of the Church of England. Additional reporting by Jeremy Grant in Singapore