New Lloyds Banking Group chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio plans to speed up the asset-sale programme of the part-nationalised British bank, including its sale of six hundred UK retail branches.

Mr Horta-Osorio also announced on his first day in the job that he was launching a strategic review for the company, the conclusions of which would be announced at the end of the first half of this year.

Lloyds said that given the strategic review it would not be announcing any further branch closures until the end of 2011.

Lloyds is 41 per cent owned by the UK government after being bailed out during the credit crisis when it was saddled with billions of pounds of losses from its takeover of troubled rival HBOS in 2008, a deal brokered by the Labour government of the time.

Reuters