NatWest buys back £1bn of its shares from UK government

NatWest has bought back shares worth £1bn from the government, as the bailed-out bank's privatisation continues after a plan to offer a chunk of the stock to retail investors was abandoned.

- Jasper Jolly

The government and NatWest said yesterday that the Treasury's holding would drop from 14.2% to 11.4%, after the sale of shares at a price of about £3.81, the bank's closing price last Friday. The government's shareholding has dropped by more than two-thirds from about 38% in December 2023.

The sale means the government has now recouped more than £20bn from the sale of shares that it has held since a £46bn bailout in 2008 during the financial crisis, when the Treasury was forced to step in to prevent the bank, then called Royal Bank of Scotland, from going under. The government owned 84% of NatWest when it was part-nationalised.