Patrick Jenkins (“Logic behind mass-market sale of NatWest stock has long gone”, Inside Business, February 20) provides a long list of reasons for the government not to sell its NatWest shares at this time.
It seems like déjà vu all over again.
I recall an almost identical list when discussing this very topic with Jenkins, then the FT banking editor, about 15 years ago. Then, as now, there was an impending general election and the prospect of management changes. Surely the value would go up, we thought. Indeed this was a conversation I had with a succession of FT banking editors.
While I might disagree with items on Jenkins’ list, critically, he is right on his final pro-sale point about getting the government off the shareholder register.
Here, more than questions around management, timing or value, the critical point must surely be ending the absurd 15-year-long conflict of interest, where the government has been overseeing — that is regulating — a bank where it is also the controlling owner. One can only wonder how long the rehabilitation of NatWest to private ownership has been delayed by having its controlling shareholder’s prime motivation being political and not determined by economics.
Indeed, a sell-off by the government 14 years ago, at a big discount, would have been at a price at least 30-40 per cent above today’s value — and that doesn’t adjust for inflation.
That’s a lot of hospitals and schools! Sell, sell, sell. Fast, fast, fast.
Pete Hahn
Emeritus Professor of Banking & Finance
London W9, UK
