NatWest is on the brink of returning to full private ownership after the taxpayers’ stake in the banking giant fell below 1 per cent.
The Treasury has sold another chunk of shares, taking its holding down from 1.98 per cent to 0.9 per cent.
It means the bank is on the verge of becoming private again, almost 17 years after being rescued in the 2008 financial crisis.
NatWest chief executive Paul Thwaite has said it will be a ‘symbolic moment’ for banking.
Shares in the bank rose 1 per cent, or 5.1p, to a 15-year high of 498.1p but remain down 90 per cent since 2007.
NatWest, which was called Royal Bank of Scotland at the time, received almost £46billion of taxpayer funding in 2008 and 2009 in a bailout engineered by then prime minister Gordon Brown and chancellor Alistair Darling amid fears it would run out of cash.
‘Sorry tale’: The Treasury said it has sold another chunk of shares in Natwest taking its holding down from 1.98% to 0.9%
The Treasury’s stake peaked at 84.4 per cent in 2009.
At the end of 2023, the holding was 40 per cent, but the Treasury has been accelerating efforts to offload its stake by selling shares to retail investors and into the public market.
NatWest said: ‘We welcome the progress the Treasury continues to make, having reduced its shareholding from nearly 40 per cent in December 2023.’
It is not known exactly when all the taxpayer stake will be sold off.
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