Macquarie could miss out on the Green Investment Bank, with ministers said to prefer a float

Ministers are poised to scrap a planned sale of the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to Australian investment firm Macquarie, pushing instead for a £3.8bn stock market listing.

In a humiliating climbdown, the business secretary Greg Clark is expected to tear up a deal that had started to come under intense scrutiny at both Westminster and Holyrood in Edinburgh. The privatisation could be even larger than the £3.3bn stock market listing of Royal Mail in 2013.

Macquarie was chosen last October as the preferred bidder for the government’s Edinburgh-based lender — set up in 2012 by Sir Vince Cable, when he was business secretary, to spur growth in the renewable energy industry.

Two weeks ago The Sunday Times revealed that Macquarie had taken steps to start