NatWest returns to majority private control as it buys back £1.2bn in shares

theguardian.com:

NatWest Group has returned to majority private ownership after it agreed to buy back £1.2bn of shares from the UK government, more than 13 years after the company was bailed out by taxpayers at the height of the financial crisis.

The company, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), said it had agreed to make an off-market purchase of 550m shares, or 4.91% of its share capital, from HM Treasury at Friday’s closing price of 220.5p, in a statement to the stock market on Monday.

The deal, the fifth since the bailout, will be completed on 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.

Gordon Brown’s government announced the £37bn bailout in October 2008, after the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers caused chaos across the global financial system. As well as RBS, the bailout also included Lloyds TSB and HBOS, which later combined to form Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds bought back the last of its shares from the government in 2017.

The path back to majority private ownership has been longer for NatWest Group, which became a symbol of the pre-financial crisis excesses of British banking, after a series of disastrous expansions under chief executive Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, who was later stripped of his knighthood after public ire. The chief executive, Alison Rose, ditched the RBS Group brand in 2020.

Rose said on Monday: “Reducing government ownership below 50% is an important milestone for NatWest and a further demonstration of the progress we are making.”

The latest NatWest share purchase price represents a loss for the government, which paid an average