The company, formerly known as the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), said it had agreed to buy 550 million shares, or 4.91% of its share capital, from HM Treasury at Friday’s closing price of 220.5 a.m. statement on the stock exchange on Monday. The deal, the fifth since the bailout, will be finalized Wednesday, leaving the government with a 48.1% stake in the banking group, a symbolic moment after more than 13 years of majority state ownership. At the peak, the government owned 84% of the group. The Gordon Brown’s government announced a 37 37 billion bailout in October 2008 following the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which wreaked havoc on the global financial system. In addition to RBS, the bailout also included Lloyds TSB and HBOS, which later merged to form Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds bought its last share from the government in 2017. The road to a return to majority private ownership was a long one for the NatWest Group, which became a symbol of pre-crisis British bank excesses after a series of catastrophic expansions under CEO Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, who later his knight was removed after public outrage. CEO Alison Rose left the RBS Group brand in 2020. Rose said Monday: “Reducing state ownership below 50% is a major milestone for NatWest and a further testament to the progress we are making.” The latest NatWest share price represents a significant loss for the taxpayer, who paid an average of p 500 per share in 2008. The rest of the government’s share will be worth about 11 11.9 billion at Friday’s closing price. John Glen, the Treasury Secretary for Finance under Chancellor Rishi Sunak, said: “This sale means that the government is no longer the majority owner of the NatWest Group and is therefore an important milestone in our plan to return the bank to the private sector. sector. We will continue to give priority to providing value for money to the taxpayer as we promote this plan. “ The government had planned to sell its entire public stake in NatWest by 2023-24, but delayed stock sales due to the pandemic. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent budget watchdog, said last week that the government had recovered 13 134 billion from its intervention in the financial crisis, compared with 13 137 billion in spending. That would leave the government with a cash surplus of, 17.1 billion for the measures of the financial crisis. However, this does not include the cost of borrowing to finance the bailout program, with an estimated ,7 47.7 billion in additional debt interest costs, meaning the crisis has cost the government 31 31 billion in cash alone. Simon Adamson, chief executive of credit rating agency CreditSights, said the sale of the stock was “a significant milestone in the revitalization of NatWest”, although it did not have “significant practical implications”. Subscribe to the daily Business Today email or follow the Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk The Treasury Department took a tangible approach to its share and allowed the bank to operate in much the same way as other commercial banks. It has paid 1 1.1 billion in bonuses to its bankers in the last four years alone, while Rose has received 6 3.6 million in salary for 2021 – far more than 10 times more than the highest paid civil servants. When he was a shadowy chancellor, Labor MP John McDonnell urged the government to use its property to prevent the closure of central stores, while some economists argued that the government should have targeted the bank’s balance sheet with investments in the green economy. McDonnell, other politicians and activists have also pushed the government to do more to correct the mistakes of RBS’s now-infamous Global Restructuring Group (GRG). The GRG unit mistreated small business customers and in some cases took advantage of their bankruptcies. RBS has denied allegations that it deliberately pushed small businesses into liquidation.
