[2] Despite rumours of interest from the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, no formal offers were made public, and Prudential dropped its plans in August 2004.

Subsequently, Prudential bought back the remaining minority share in January 2006, and delisted the organisation from the London Stock Exchange.

On 29 January 2007, Prudential announced that it had agreed to sell Egg to Citigroup for a consideration of £575 million subject to approval by the Financial Services Authority.

[10] In November 2007, approximately 350 non specialist roles were moved from the Dudley centre to Derby, resulting in redundancies and relocation packages.

Egg Card was launched in the United Kingdom with a television campaign by CHI and press advertisements and direct marketing created by Lowe Plus.

Despite investing heavily in the market in France, the services were never popular with the French, who generally hold fewer credit cards than the British.

This led to speculation that the move was an attempt to remove customers who did not accumulate interest on their accounts and therefore did not generate profit for the bank.

[19] The Financial Services Authority fined Egg £721,000 in December 2008 for the persistent misselling of payment protection insurance (PPI) on its credit cards.

[20] The authority's director of enforcement, Margaret Cole, said "Egg used inappropriate sales techniques to try to persuade customers to buy payment protection insurance on their credit card, even when they asserted they did not want the cover."