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After 17 years the Treasury's NatWest exit is in sight, with no need for a flashy public sell-off
The Guardian
|November 12, 2024
Sometime next spring, HM Treasury should finally sell its last share in NatWest, or the Royal Bank of Scotland as it was.
The process will have taken 17 years. If that feels like an age, it is a shorter timespan than seemed likely only 12 months ago.
At the end of last year, the government's stake—84.9% after the two-stage nationalisation by the last Labour administration in 2008-09—was still 38%. Now it is down to 11.4% after the latest "directed buyback", in which the bank bought shares from the Treasury for cancellation—in this case £1bn-worth.
NatWest probably has scope to fund another £1bn in the same way before spring, but the bulk of the shares will be shifted by straightforward sales in the stock market. It is this steady drip-feed of shares via a trading plan that has quietly made the difference in the past 12 months.
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