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NatWest is set to confirm interim boss Paul Thwaite as its permanent group chief executive, with the state-backed lender preparing for the government to launch a public share sale before the end of the summer.
The appointment is subject to approval from NatWest’s board, which is due to meet on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan. A formal announcement is expected on Friday at the same time as the bank’s full-year earnings.
Thwaite stepped in after Dame Alison Rose resigned in the midst of the Nigel Farage “debanking” scandal in July. The bank only launched its formal search for her permanent successor last month, led by incoming chair Rick Haythornthwaite.
The appointment of a permanent chief executive is seen by ministers as a vital precondition for a possible retail sale of NatWest shares; the government owns a 35 per cent stake in the high-street bank. “Governance stability is critical,” said one government insider.
NatWest declined to comment.
Jeremy Hunt, chancellor, sees a retail sale — possibly in the summer — as a way of revitalising popular interest in UK equities, although he has insisted that any sale would have to represent value for money.
Hunt said last year that he wanted to “get Sid investing again”, a reference to the “everyman” investor invited to buy British Gas shares in its 1986 privatisation. Ministers want to press ahead with the NatWest sale before the general election, expected in the autumn.
NatWest was catapulted to the centre of a scandal last year when former leader of the UK Independence and Brexit parties Nigel Farage claimed he had been ousted from its private bank Coutts for his political views.
Farage subsequently obtained a 40-page dossier that showed Coutts had closed his account in part because his politics were deemed “at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation” and that the lender’s reputational risk committee had accused him of “pandering to racists” and being a “disingenuous grifter”.
The debacle prompted Rose to resign after admitting she had made a “serious error of judgment” when briefing a BBC journalist about the matter.
Thwaite, who had previously headed NatWest’s commercial bank, was then appointed to the top role for an initial 12-month period.
He is the second consecutive internal appointment to the top job. Rose is a former graduate trainee.
Earlier this month, the lender said it had hired UBS executive Emma Crystal to lead Coutts following the resignation of Peter Flavel at the height of the Farage scandal.