In a business career of 40-plus years, Rick Haythornthwaite has never been a banker. The closest he’s come was a long stint as chairman of Mastercard – but that’s a payment processor, which is a different type of financial beast. His chief executive life was as an industrialist: Blue Circle cement and Invensys, as the old BTR engineering conglomerate was rebranded. And his long chairing tour has also taken in British Gas owner Centrica, Network Rail and, now, the AA and Ocado. He is therefore a surprise pick to be chairman of NatWest.
There are a couple of flops on that CV (Centrica was a place of lowered dividends and low expectations while he was in the chair), but Haythornthwaite still ticks the “experienced” and “safe” boxes, which was probably the priority for NatWest after the great Coutts/Nigel Farage fiasco. His Mastercard years, at least, were a period of runaway share price success.
