As an ex TSB/Lloyds TSB employee, I am actually rather surprised that Labour are encouraging share ownership at all considering how risky it can be. Lots of employees owning shares won't stop stupid investment decisions by the board
I’ll wager most of the shares you had in LloydsTSB were either from profit sharing (ie freebies) or SAYE (bought at a decent discount to the market, 3-5 years after you’d saved cash to buy them, with any gain being tax free and if the price had fallen you’d have just taken your cash back). The risk taken on by most employees was through lack of portfolio diversification.......keeping all their eggs in one basket.
Staff having shares is a good move for most companies.....tend to work harder/care a bit more if you’ve git additional skin in the game. Trying to force it on smaller companies is daft though.
