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NatWest Group is preparing to cancel millions of pounds in bonuses and share awards earmarked for its former chief executive following a probe into the closure of the former UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s bank accounts.

Sky News has learnt that NatWest, in which the government remains the single-largest shareholder, wants to resolve the issue of Dame Alison Rose’s payoff ahead of its third-quarter results on 27 October.

This weekend, City sources said final decisions had yet to be taken by the bank’s board, chaired by Sir Howard Davies, and cautioned that the complexity of the process meant that finalising its response could yet slip into November.

One said there was a desire to publish the details as soon as the end of next week, although they conceded that that target was “highly ambitious”.

They added that until decisions were formally taken by the bank’s directors, the final outcome of their deliberations would remain uncertain.

According to a public filing by NatWest in August, Dame Alison has been receiving her annual £2.4m package comprising base salary, pension contribution and a share-based fixed-pay allowance since her departure at the end of July.

She is also eligible to be considered for a pro rata portion of the £2.9m annual bonus and long-term share awards that made up the remainder of her total maximum pay package of £5.3m.

In addition, she holds roughly 2.5 million unvested shares in NatWest, which at Friday’s closing share price of 225.9p were worth £5.65m.

That amounts to a theoretical total of nearly £11m, although the fact that Dame Alison left midway through 2023 means she would only have been eligible for just over half of the £2.9m in annual variable pay.

‘Inconceivable’

One source close to the process said it was “inconceivable” that she would be awarded any discretionary pay for 2023, and said it was “highly likely” that the bank would seek to cancel the unvested shares, although they admitted that the latter move, if implemented, could become the subject of a legal challenge.

Read more:
Farage banks on Lloyds in wake of NatWest account closure row

The source added that the rest of the £2.4m due to be paid to Dame Alison during her 12-month notice period was also now in question, although it was unclear whether it would be curtailed.

Exit package

The government is expected to be consulted on the final terms of her exit package in the next fortnight.

One Whitehall insider said this weekend they had made it clear that Dame Alison should receive “only the minimum possible payoff”.

Dame Alison left the bank by mutual consent – where she had been widely regarded to be doing a competent rebuilding job 15 years after its £45.5bn taxpayer bailout – after acknowledging that she had inaccurately briefed a BBC journalist about the reasons for closing Mr Farage’s Coutts accounts.

The report, which the broadcaster was forced to amend, suggested that the former UKIP leader did not meet its commercial criteria.

It subsequently emerged after he submitted a subject access request that his political views had been instrumental in the decision.

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July: ’10 banks turned me down’ – Farage

Dame Alison has been replaced on an interim basis by Paul Thwaite, formerly the head of its commercial business.

A report compiled by the law firm Travers Smith examining the “exit process” for Mr Farage and the disclosure of information about his banking arrangements to the BBC was submitted to the NatWest board earlier this month.

A second phase of the probe, assessing the closure of Coutts accounts during the last two years, is due to be completed by the end of this month.

A NatWest spokesperson said this weekend: “In line with our previous commitments, the key findings of the independent review and the recommendations will be considered by the board.

“These, along with the [group’s] response, will be published in due course.

“In the meantime we will not comment on any speculation.”

A spokesman for the former NatWest chief declined to comment.

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Dame Alison, the first woman to run one of Britain’s big four London-listed banks, had initially sought to draw a line under the row with Mr Farage by apologising to him, and then by foregoing her bonus for this year.

Within hours, however, signals from Downing Street that it had lost confidence in her leadership prompted the bank to convene an emergency board meeting to rubber-stamp her departure.

Sky News revealed on Friday that Mr Farage had moved his personal banking arrangements to Lloyds, Britain’s biggest high street lender.

Sir Howard is due to step down next year and will be replaced by Rick Haythornthwaite, the former MasterCard chairman who currently chairs Ocado Group, the online grocer.

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Jaguar Land Rover staff home for another day as company reels from cyber attack

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Jaguar Land Rover staff home for another day as company reels from cyber attack

Staff of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have been told to stay home for a further day, Sky News understands, as the carmaker struggles to recover from a cyber attack.

Employees of the British company have now been told to remain off work until Wednesday. Previously, workers were directed not to return until Tuesday.

A decision on whether to bring staff back or not is being taken day by day, Sky News understands.

Money blog: One thing you should never have on your CV

JLR shut down its systems when it noticed the cyber attack on Tuesday last week, saying it had been “severely disrupted”.

Its retail activities were also impacted, but there was no evidence at the time that “any customer data has been stolen”, though JLR is reported to have flagged the risk of a data breach to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Thousands of production staff at the UK’s largest car manufacturing sites in Halewood, Merseyside, and Solihull and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands are still being paid.

More on Cyberattacks

Jaguar Land Rover is the UK’s latest major company to face a cyber incident, after Marks & Spencer had its operations disrupted for months.

After an attack over Easter, the high street chain only resumed click and collect services in August.

Attacks on the Co-op and Harrods were detected more swiftly, and had less of an impact.

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Jaguar Land Rover paused shipments to the US in April in response to President Trump’s new tariffs. A US-UK deal was subsequently agreed.

Reporting from The Sunday Times said JLR operations could be disrupted for “most of September” or worse.

On Wednesday, a group of English-speaking hackers claimed responsibility for the JLR attack via a Telegram platform called Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an amalgamation of the names of hacking groups Scattered Spider, Lapsus$ and ShinyHunters.

Scattered Spider, a loose group of relatively young hackers, were behind the Co-Op, Harrods and M&S attacks.

JLR suppliers Evtec, WHS Plastics, SurTec and OPmobility have had to temporarily lay off staff, impacting roughly 6,000 workers.

A spokesperson for JLR said on Monday: “We continue to work around the clock to restart our global applications in a controlled and safe manner.

“We are working with third-party cybersecurity specialists and alongside law enforcement.

“We are very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused. Our retail partners remain open and we will continue to provide further updates.”

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US tech and finance giants to join Trump on second UK state visit

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US tech and finance giants to join Trump on second UK state visit

The boss of Nvidia, the chipmaker which has become the world’s most valuable public company, is among the corporate chiefs lining up to accompany President Donald Trump on next week’s state visit to the UK.

Sky News has learnt that Jensen Huang, the Nvidia chief executive who has presided over the stratospheric rise in its valuation to more than $4trn, is expected to attend a state banquet at Windsor Castle hosted by King Charles III during the trip.

Sources said on Monday that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI; Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive of asset management behemoth BlackRock; and Stephen Schwarzman, the boss of private equity giant Blackstone, were also expected to be among the attendees.

Money blog: One thing you should never have on your CV

Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, has also been invited and may attend the state banquet, the sources added, while Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan chief, is understood to be unable to make the trip to Britain because of existing diary commitments.

The attendance of figures such as Mr Huang and, potentially, Mr Altman, will fuel expectations that a wave of corporate deals and investments in the UK will be unveiled during President Trump’s unprecedented second state visit.

Closer collaboration between the two countries’ nuclear power industries is expected to be one of the main focal points of trade-related discussions during the three-day trip, as well as artificial intelligence and the broader technology industry.

More on Nvidia

President Trump’s visit will, however, come amid tensions over his tariff regime, with continuing uncertainty about the impact on British manufacturing sectors, including steel.

There are also continuing tensions between the UK government and major drugmakers over pricing, with the US administration pressuring pharmaceutical companies to slash the price of prescription medicines in the US.

An Nvidia spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on our executives’ travel schedules.”

BlackRock, Blackstone, Apple and JP Morgan declined to comment, while OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

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Economic crisis in France goes beyond its overspending problem

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Economic crisis in France goes beyond its overspending problem

Once upon a time if folks wanted to pinpoint the most economically-vulnerable country in Europe – the one most likely to face a crisis – they would invariably point to Greece or to Italy.

They were the nations with the eye-waveringly high bond yields, signalling how reluctant financiers were to lend them money.

Today, however, all of that has changed. The country invariably highlighted as Europe’s problem child is France.

Indeed, look at the interest rates investors charge European nations and France faces even higher interest rates than Greece.

And these economic travails are central to understanding the political difficulties France is facing right now, with one prime minister after another resigning in the face of a parliamentary setback.

Read more:
French PM looks set to lose confidence vote

More on France

It mostly comes back to the state of the public finances. France’s deficit is among the highest in the developed world right now.

Everyone spent enormous sums during the pandemic. But France has struggled, more than nearly everyone else, to bring its spending back down and, hence, to reduce its deficit. Successive budget plans have been announced and then shelved in the face of political resistance.

France’s government spends more, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other developed economy.

The government’s most recent budget plans called for what most people would see as relatively minor spending cuts – barely more than a couple of percentage points off spending, after which France would still be the third biggest spender in the world.

But even these cuts were too controversial for the French people, or rather their politicians.

Yet another prime minister looks likely to fall victim to an unsuccessful bill. Deja vu all over again, you might say.

A deeper issue is that the latest worsening in France’s public finances isn’t just a sign of political resistance, or indeed of a nation that can’t bear to take the unpalatable fiscal medicine others (for instance Greece or the UK) have long been ingesting.

For years, France could rely on a phenomenon many other developed economies couldn’t: strong productivity growth.

The country’s people might not work as many hours as everyone else, but they sure created a lot of economic output when they were at their desks.

However, in recent years, French productivity has disappointed. Indeed, output per hour growth in France has dropped well below other nations, which in turn means less tax revenue and, lo and behold, the deficit gets bigger and bigger.

All of which is why so many people, including Prime Minister Francois Bayrou himself, have warned that France is at risk of a market meltdown.

In a recent speech, he pointed to the example of Liz Truss and her 2022 mini-Budget. Beware the market, he said. You never know how close you are to a crisis.

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