The Treasury is on track to complete the sale of the taxpayer’s stake in NatWest Group as early as the spring of next year as officials consider whether to launch a further placing of shares in the bailed-out bank.
Sky News can reveal that based on the current pace of share disposals by UK Government Investments (UKGI), the final remnants of the state’s original £45.5bn stake will be returned to private ownership as soon as May 2025.
If Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, opts to launch a placing of stock with institutional investors or a directed buyback using NatWest‘s surplus capital, the final shares could be sold off even sooner, market sources said on Wednesday.
The Treasury has previously forecast that the sell-off will be complete by 2025-26, subject to market conditions and disposals representing value for money.
One Whitehall source said that timetable was unlikely to be revised in documents accompanying next week’s budget.
They acknowledged, though, that it was now conceivable that the final disposal of shares could take place within six months, with the current trading plan returning about one percentage point of the bank’s equity to private ownership roughly every two weeks.
At the start of this year, the Treasury’s stake in NatWest stood at 38%, while earlier this month stock market filings showed that it had been reduced to just under 16%.
A stock market filing showing that the stake has fallen below 15% could be made as early as next week, according to one insider, with the company updating the stock market on its third-quarter performance on Thursday.
That would mark the end of an 17-year journey precipitated by a funding crunch in the global banking system which left Britain’s largest banks reliant on state support as they battled to stay alive.
Even after dividends and other fees received from NatWest during the period of partial government ownership, the government will have accrued losses running to tens of billions of pounds on its initial investment.
Northern Rock was subsequently sold to Virgin Money, while the taxpayers’ stake in Lloyds Banking Group was fully exited in 2017.
The Treasury and NatWest declined to comment.