Delaying NatWest share sales doesn’t matter. Just get the best price

‘While NatWest itself has done little wrong in the recent months, aftershocks from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and Credit Suisse’s rescue takeover by UBS are still being felt in all banks’ valuations.’ Photograph: Matt Crossick/PA

It was almost exactly a year ago that the Treasury trumpeted what it called a “landmark” moment: for the first time since the financial crisis in 2008, NatWest, the formerly shredded Royal Bank of Scotland, was no longer majority-owned by the state. A £1.2bn sale of shares had cut the Treasury’s holding to 48.1%.

A path to a full disposal by 2025-26 – a target the government set itself in 2021 – seemed assured, especially as UK Government Investments (UKGI), which manages the holding, cracked on with the selling and got the stake down to 41.5% in short order. Pandemic fears over losses had passed. It was possible to believe in a happy tale of more shares being sold at gradually higher prices against a backdrop of robust market demand.