Building society Skipton eyes £250m mortgages sale

Britain's fourth-biggest building society has put a £250m portfolio of mortgage loans up for sale, underlining financial institutions' determination to churn their balance sheets more aggressively in a lower-for-longer interest rate environment.

Sky News has learnt that Skipton has hired investment bankers at Morgan Stanley (Xetra: 885836 - news) to assess prospective buyers' appetite for the loan book.

The sale process is already under way, insiders said on Tuesday, and largely relates to a non-performing portfolio issued under the Amber Homeloans brand.

The Skipton, which also owns the Connells estate agency brand, is one of the UK's biggest financial mutuals, with more than 850,000 customers and £19bn in assets.

A number of specialist financial investors are said to have expressed an interest in the Skipton assets.

David Cutter, Skipton's group chief executive, said last July that the outcome of the EU referendum had made it "more difficult to forecast trading conditions in the short to medium term, in particular any movements in Bank Base Rate and any impact on housing transactions and house prices".

At its last set of results, Skipton said half-year pre-tax profits had risen to £76.8m, up from £72.1m in the same period in 2015.

Skipton did not return calls seeking comment on Tuesday.