UK cuts stake in NatWest to below half

Bloomberg

NatWest Group, the British bank will no longer be mostly owned by the UK government after it bought back nearly 5% of its shares in an off-market deal.
The sale of the stake for £1.2 billion takes government’s shareholding to about 48%, and ends more than a decade of majority state ownership of the bank
The UK government’s latest sale of NatWest Group Plc shares holds some long-awaited symbolism. Its shareholding is now below 50%, more than a decade after it stepped in to save the bank during the global financial crisis.
NatWest announced a 1.2 billion-pound ($1.6 billion) directed buyback of shares from HM Treasury in a filing. The bank will make an off-market purchase of 549.9 million shares at a price of 220.5 pence. After the sale, the Treasury will own a 48.06% stake in the lender formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland.
The threshold, although largely symbolic, will resonate. Conservative governments have repeatedly pledged to cut the holding, but the process of selling the stock has been stalled as Brexit dominated the British political scene and the lender’s market value languished at about half the amount of the bailout. That divestment has sped up in recent months, boosted by open
market sales being restarted.
Still, the Treasury remains NatWest’s biggest shareholder by far, more than a decade after the RBS’s 45.5 billion-pound bailout.
It will likely take a hefty loss on the selldown with the share price hovering around 220 pence. The government previously indicated that its break-even price on the sums injected into the bank is about 400 pence.