Cash in the hand is worth any number of birds in the bush these days, so you can’t blame Lloyds Banking Group raising a potential £500m through a sale of shares in listed wealth manager St James’s Place.

The sale implies a gain of £400m for the bank, cutting its stake in St James's Place from 57% to 37%. The good folk at Lloyds argue a 50% gain in SJP's share price over the last year made the sale a no-brainer. SJP executives have also been nagging the bank to cut its stake for years, in a bid to get greater control of their own destiny.