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NatWest chair thanks UK taxpayers for 2008 bailout
The Guardian
|April 24, 2025
The chair of NatWest has thanked UK taxpayers for the bank's 2008 bailout weeks before it returns to private ownership, assuring shareholders that bosses had "fixed the issues of the past" and would not "open up floodgates of risk" despite government pressure.
Rick Haythornthwaite made the comments to a small group of shareholders at the bank's annual investor meeting.
He said NatWest was indebted to taxpayers for the £46bn rescue package that kept the bank afloat during the financial crisis.
The bailout was engineered by the late Alistair Darling, the then chancellor, and the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, amid fears the UK's biggest bank could run out of cash after a period of expansion under Fred Goodwin, who was later stripped of his knighthood.
This story is from the April 24, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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