Lloyds sells US mortgage portfolio for £3.3bn Lloyds Banking Group has further accelerated its strategy of disposals by selling off a book of securities backed by US home loans for £3.3bn. Lloyds, which is 39 per cent owned by the UK taxpayer, said it would book a £540m pre-tax gain from the sale of the US mortgage portfolio, in a move that the bank said would boost its core tier one capital and help trim its pension deficit. The sale, which had a book value of £2.7bn, is the latest in a string of disposals by the part-nationalised bank as it seeks to meet fresh capital requirements set out by the UK banking regulator. Lloyds said the sale would bolster its ratio of core equity capital to risk-weighted assets - measured under the regulator's new rules - by about 47 basis points, equivalent to £1.4bn of capital, or 33 basis points under the previous regime. In the same transaction, Lloyds" pension trust also sold its share of the US mortgage portfolio with a book value of £805m, realising a pre-tax gain on the sale of £360m that will be used to cut its deficit. The pension scheme had a deficit of £957m at the end of 2012, with assets of more than £30bn. Earlier this week, the state-backed lender outlined plans to sell its Geneva-based private bank and branches in Zurich, Monaco and Gibraltar to Union Bancaire Privée, the Geneva-based asset management group, for £100m. Last week, Lloyds, which was bailed out by the UK government following the financial crisis, raised a gross £450m by selling another tranche of its shares in St James's Place, the FTSE 250 wealth manager. Lloyds is also closing its offices offering private banking services in Dubai and South Africa, and is to sell its Miami-based private banking office to Banco Sabadell. The disposals are part of a strategy by António Horta-Osório, Lloyds" chief executive, to focus on the lender's core UK retail and commercial bank and shrink its balance sheet. "Together with last week's St James's Place stake sale, the common equity tier one ratio should have improved from 8.1 per cent reported at end of the first quarter to about 8.7 per cent, underpinning the bank's 2013 year-end target of at least 9 per cent and 10 per cent in 2014," said Vivek Raja, analyst at Oriel Securities. Lloyds shares, which have more than doubled in the last year, fell nearly 1 per cent on Friday to 61.23p. The average price the government paid for its equity stake at the time of the bailout was 61p.