The Treasury has sold a stake worth £1.1bn in NatWest back to the bank.
The taxpayers’ holding in NatWest has decreased from 61.7% to 59.8% after it sold 591 million shares back to the bank at 190.5p a share in an off-market deal authorised by Chancellor Rishi Sunak and managed by º£½ÇÊÓƵ Government Investments (º£½ÇÊÓƵGI).
The bank, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, was bailed out during the financial crisis more than a decade ago.
The move is the third time the Treasury has sold shares in the bank after the Government put in £45.8bn for an 82% stake.
The deal sees NatWest buy back 591 million shares from the Government, leaving its current stake worth £13bn on current share prices.
The share sale also triggers NatWest to contribute £500m to its main pension scheme.
According to the latest estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility, (OBR) of the £45.8bn spent to prop up the bank during the crisis, the taxpayer is expected to make a loss of £38.8bn.
Last year, just as the coronavirus crisis struck the º£½ÇÊÓƵ, the Treasury pushed back a deadline to sell the entire stake by a year, to March 2025, as a global sell-off saw stock markets around the globe collapse.
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The Treasury also missed out on a dividend payment last year, due to regulators banning payouts by financial institutions during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
NatWest subsequently declared a dividend in 2021 of 3p a share, handing £225 million to the Government as the biggest shareholder.
The Government sold shares in RBS twice since 2008, with the last in 2018 by reducing its stake by 7.7% at 271p a share.
A previous 5.4% stake in the bank was sold in 2015 at 330p a share.
