Natwest Share Discussion Threads

[chiefbrody] 25/11/2023 06:10

That was then. This is now.

[svend2] 25/11/2023 00:42

Polar Fox > Maybe jo public might/should take a share of the flotation if the price/conditions are right just IMO. Why not?

[smithie6] 24/11/2023 22:05

Chiefbrody

...but didn't Santander buy a UK bank in order to establish itself in the UK ?

If so, it shows your post is wrong.

[polar fox] 24/11/2023 14:17

cb,

Given what Hunt said on Wednesday, if a big, well-managed US bank were to offer/negotiate around 250-275pps for the whole of the govt's holding, I suspect they would sell out pronto, with a public offer then for the remainder. Hunt would get loadsamoney and get rid of a pain in the backside.
But I doubt a buyer from any other country would be welcomed.

I think I now understand why Katie Murray sold over 600k shares last May at 274p!

In a sense, especially since the Q3, NatWest has become a low-hanging fruit of rare opportunity for the likes of JPMC and BoA and it's probably mostly a matter of whether there is any interest over there in such UK exposure.

[johnwise] 24/11/2023 13:59

How nearly £1m has gone 'missing' from NatWest Isa savings transfers

NatWest topped the cash Isa tables in the summer

Dozens of readers say their cash has disappeared

In total, £941,888 is missing - with some waiting up to four months for answers

[chiefbrody] 24/11/2023 12:38

Would the powers that be ever let a big UK be taken over. These days I think not.

[smithie6] 24/11/2023 10:33

...with the Govt reducing its stake

Then the overall company becomes worth more imo.
..it's value for example to other banks increases, as a possible takeover target. (No one wants to take over a bank where a Govt owns 35-40% & effectively controls it)

[gcom2] 24/11/2023 09:18

Should warn Sid about the 10% drops on reasonably good quarterlies?

[smurfy2001] 23/11/2023 14:44

Should you invest in NatWest if the Government offers cut-price shares?

Questor Autumn Statement special: the Chancellor plans a new ‘tell Sid’ share sale

[smithie6] 23/11/2023 08:54

Clocktower wrote
"The removal of the last CEO, through her own fault will in time come to be seen as very regrettable as she had done a good job."

I think you are perhaps the only person posting on here with that view !

--------

Businesses that have raised money from investors in order to exist should operate taking in to account those investors (who are risking their money); or should they operate for the personal social interests & charity interests of the "temporary" boss of the business ?

Alison Rose appears to have gone a bit native & devoted a lot of her work time to using the bank's own money & workers for social interests & charity interests. If she wanted to do that she should have applied to work for UNICEF, Barnardos or the Red Cross & not a major bank.

If she had not been removed due to breaking the regulations then I personally think that shareholders would have voted to remove her at the next AGM.

(....social obligations of businesses, imo the state receives a lot of tax from businesses & from taxes on workers' wages, it is the job of the state how they use that money & how much is used to help the needy & how much for defence, hospitals, schools etc. Imo it is "not" the job of listed businesses to be state soldiers, or teachers, or treat drug addicts or give out hot soup to the needy.

[qantas] 23/11/2023 08:33

Fun fact Boy

Hedge fund short sellers suffer $43bn of losses in market rally





Please do your own research as always

[clocktower] 23/11/2023 08:10

So the government is happy to take a huge loss to help the better off make even more money that caused so much misery to so many.

NatWest is most probably one of the few banks that under the guidance of its former CEO set itself up as a bank that has been looking at setting moral standards as to where they invest.

As I understand it they are splitting itself into good bank/risky bank with offshore entities being in the risky bank bundle.

The removal of the last CEO, through her own fault will in time come to be seen as very regrettable as she had done a good job.

[hamhamham1] 23/11/2023 08:10

I was hoping NWG were going to buy the gov shares and remove them from circulation, that not gonna happen now it seems, grrr.

[jubberjim] 23/11/2023 07:44

That money that should be flowing into NatWest will because if the chancellor's statement although badly timed for NatWest should be off some benefit for the other Big Four banks whether this will translate across is open to question.

Extremely nervous markets not much change today.

[johnwise] 23/11/2023 07:42

Pound US Dollar Exchange Rate Plummets


The Pound US Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate edged lower on Wednesday as the latest US employment data beat expectations.

At the time of writing the GBP/USD exchange rate was trading at $1.2472, down approximately 0.6% from this morning’s opening rate.
Pound (GBP) Exchange Rates Slump on Autumn Statement

The Pound (GBP) was volatile on Wednesday, though ultimately slumped following the release of the UK’s annual Autumn Statement.

While UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement provided growth incentives, Hunt’s plans to implement higher rates for larger businesses came as a disappointment to many retailers and hospitality businesses.

Furthermore, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast a rise in unemployment in the coming years, as well as providing a downwardly revised level of UK economic growth in the wake of the report.

While investors digest Hunt’s economic outlook and the national implications, Bank of England (BoE) seem to be retreating from yesterday’s hawkish wins, as concerns of economic slowing within the UK undermine the possibility of any imminent interest rate hikes.

[johnwise] 23/11/2023 07:11

UK economic growth forecasts slashed amid persistent inflation


The UK fiscal watchdog has slashed its growth forecasts for the economy in the coming years and warned that it will take longer to bring inflation down.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said the economy would grow by more than expected this year but was set for three years of growth below previous forecasts.

It came as the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled around £20 billion of business and personal tax cuts in the Government’s autumn statement, which he dubbed a “statement for growth”.

Nevertheless, he was immediately warned that the country is still on track to face the highest tax burden since the Second World War and a further fall in living standards for Britons.

[polar fox] 23/11/2023 06:53

Recently, there was a poll asking for one word which best sums up the UK at present.

The clear winner was the word "BROKEN". From the very top down!

[maxk] 22/11/2023 20:57

Oh dear...



Who would buy NatWest shares?

If you see ‘Sid’, tell him not to touch this load of old flannel with a bargepole

PATRICK O'FLYNN
22 November 2023 • 2:47pm







Jeremy Hunt’s half-hearted impersonation of Nigel Lawson at the height of Thatcherism served only to remind us that nostalgia isn’t as good as it used to be.

The Chancellor cited Lawson by name when repeating his dictum that borrowing is merely deferred taxation on future generations. Yet the public debt mountain he detailed is so Everest-like that the Late Lord Lawson of Blaby would surely not have been impressed.

Hunt’s most obvious and eye-catching channelling of the 1980s spirit of free enterprise came when he floated the idea of a grand sell-off of NatWest shares acquired by the state during the great banking bailouts of 2008.

“It is time to get Sid investing again,” said Hunt. For the youthful uninitiated, that was a reference to the advertising campaign used to promote the British Gas privatisation of 1986 which involved a search for the mythical Sid with the aim of telling him to apply for some shares because they were a sure thing. And indeed the share issue was greatly oversubscribed and the share price soared after privatisation.

Alas, the same is unlikely to be true of the 39 per cent or so of NatWest stock still owned by taxpayers. That giant holding has lost value over the past year amid the great debanking row and various economic headwinds and there is little reason to expect a post privatisation boom.

Sid is probably retired by now and therefore will have been reassured by the continuation of the triple lock on the uprating of pensioner benefits. But his modern equivalents may be struggling too hard with soaring rents and the rest of the cost-of-living crisis to get excited about the possibility of buying tranches of bank shares.

The prospect of a big NatWest sell-off is highly unlikely to recreate a zeitgeist of economic optimism and excitement. Loadsamoney, double-breasted suits, big hair and all the other glorious material vulgarities of the Thatcherite age are but a distant memory. Some will even fear that buying into NatWest is more likely to involve associating with the bank’s “values” of wokery – even in the post-Alison Rose world – than in any great prospect of yielding shareholder value.

As shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves pointed out, despite his national insurance cuts, the Chancellor did nothing to unfreeze income tax thresholds – a measure that constitutes by far the biggest tax increase of modern times, especially during a period of high inflation. The bald truth is that the tax burden is set to be the highest it has been since the Second World War.

One does not have to be a hardened cynic to suspect that Hunt’s statements pledging fidelity to the idea of a low-tax economy and sharper incentives for wealth creation are more likely to amount to an election-year pose than a long-term change of direction. Neither is the idea of 110 mostly small-scale and nerdy ideas to boost growth likely to cut the mustard with voters who have been let down too many times already.

So if you see Sid tell him: don’t touch this load of old flannel with a bargepole.

[netcurtains] 22/11/2023 16:51

#meToo 😀
Why not offer Retail holders a discounted share (>20%)for every share held... screw the Institutions and hedge funds... :-)

[crazi] 22/11/2023 16:33

Why not offer Retail holders a discounted share (>20%)for every share held... screw the Institutions and hedge funds... :-)

[polar fox] 22/11/2023 14:03

Alliance News:

UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Wednesday announced he is mulling a NatWest Group PLC retail share offer over the next year, as the government looks to trim more of its stake in the lender.

NatWest shares traded 0.7% lower at 205.50 pence each in London on Wednesday afternoon. The stock traded around session lows, having been 0.9% higher earlier on Wednesday.

Hunt said the UK government is ‘exploringR17; a possible retail share offer for NatWest over the next 12 months, though this would be subject to market conditions and ‘value for money’. The plan was announced during the chancellor’s autumn statement on Wednesday.

As of May, the UK government has held just shy of a 38.7% stake in NatWest. In March 2022, when the Treasury sold back NatWest shares to the company, its stake in the lender fell below the 50% threshold for the first time since 2008.

The UK government first began building its majority stake in the bank from October 2008 during the financial crisis as it looked to inject funds into the banking system. As a result, the government ended up holding an 81% stake in the lender - called Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC at the time - after a hefty £45.5 billion taxpayer bailout.

unquote

ADD:

D.Mail: NatWest shares will be offered to the public in a move with echoes of Thatcher's 'Tell Sid' campaign privatising British Gas in the 1980s. 'It's time to get Sid investing again,' said Mr Hunt.

[babbler] 22/11/2023 14:02

It will be an offer for their shares that the government owns and come in the next 12 months.

[polar fox] 22/11/2023 13:10

Breaking;

Hunt just mentioned something about a retail share offer of NatWest shares in the next 12 months. No detail at all. I see the share price spiked down on the charts above.

[polar fox] 21/11/2023 14:06

This excerpt from the FT is well worth a read, ahead of tomorrow's Autumn Statement:

Quote:

But any tax cut, including a possible reduction in national insurance rates, will be seen in the context of a big rise in levies that have already been introduced in this parliament and are set to continue.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation think-tank, said a 1p cut to the basic rate of income tax would benefit 36mn people who would gain an average of about £200 a year.

He noted that because income tax and national insurance thresholds are currently frozen, rather than increasing by 6.7 per cent in line with September’s inflation figure, taxes for many people would still rise.

He said the “fiscal drag” effect would raise £8bn next year, and cost all basic rate employees £270 and pensioners £170.

Referring to a possible 1p income tax cut, Bell said: “You’d only be a winner in April if you happen to earn between £40,000 and £51,000 from these offsetting tax changes.

“Someone on the median salary [£27,000] would be around £120 worse off, and the biggest loss — in both cash and proportional terms — would be for someone earning around £13,500,” he added.

Trott said Hunt would protect people on lower incomes, hinting he would raise working-age benefits by 6.7 per cent, adopting the norm of using September’s inflation data rather than the 4.6 per cent October figure.

“This is something that will be announced tomorrow,” Trott said. But she claimed the government had a record of helping people through hard times, pointing to a big inflation-linked benefits rise last year.

“Times have been very difficult, it was a very difficult time for government finances, but we made sure we prioritised benefits and pushed those up by 10.1 per cent,” she said. “We have protected people when times have been hardest.”

Other planned welfare cuts, including requiring people on long-term sick to work from home where possible, will allow Hunt to claim he is cutting public spending and clearing some space for tax cuts.

unquote

[polar fox] 19/11/2023 21:44

The front page of Monday's FT says that basic income tax may be cut by 1p, to 19p, from next April.
The Tories want to improve their dire polling, which, I suppose, could help bring my NOM bet into play.??
We'll find out on Wednesday.