The government has confirmed its remaining shares in Lloyds Banking Group have been sold, eight years after pumping in £20bn to save it.

Lloyds Bank said the government will see a return of £21.2bn on its investment.

At the height of the financial crisis taxpayers owned 43% of Lloyds.

Its return to the private sector is in stark contrast with the other bailed-out bank - Royal Bank of Scotland - that is still 73% owned by taxpayers.

The government has been slowly selling down its stake in Lloyds for the past five years.

Ministers have claimed that all the public money used to buy Lloyds shares has been returned.

However, the true cost is disputed, with some critics claiming the lost interest has not been taken into account.

Others have argued that the heavy losses previously suffered by Lloyds also hit the government's stake.

Either way, the £20.3bn of public funds used to buy the shares had already been recouped due to dividend payments made to all shareholders.

At last week's annual meeting, Lloyds chief executive António Horta Osório told shareholders he expected the government to make at least £500m from the bailout.

But on Wednesday morning he said the true figure was closer to £900m and called Lloyds one of the "strongest banks" in the world.

He also said the government had received more money than was originally invested.

"The fact that the government decided to use taxpayers' money, which is a last resort, to put £20.3bn in Lloyds at the time is evidence that the bank was in a very difficult situation," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"When I arrived six years ago the bank was in a very difficult financial situation and not focused on its customers in the UK."

The shares have been sold off by Morgan Stanley at below the 73.5p average price paid in the three-stage bailout.

But taking the dividend payments into account means the total £20bn outlay has already been repaid.