NatWest Group is to hand its chief executive a potential multimillion pound pay boost as it returns to full private ownership after nearly 17 years in state hands.
Sky News has learnt that the chair of the bank’s remuneration committee, Lena Wilson, is consulting leading institutional shareholders about an overhaul of its boardroom pay policy.
The details will be put to a vote at NatWest’s annual meeting next spring, in accordance with rules requiring investors to vote on remuneration policies every three years.
Under the plans, Paul Thwaite, who took over as the bank’s interim chief executive in July 2023 before being handed the role on a permanent basis in February, would be in line for an increase in his maximum annual bonus from 100pc of his base salary to 150%.
NatWest also intends to replace its restricted share plan (RSP) for Mr Thwaite, which awarded him stock worth a maximum of 150% of his salary, with a performance share plan (PSP) which could pay him up to three times his basic pay each year.
Assuming his salary of just under £1.2m remains unchanged, that would mean him being in line for a maximum reward package – excluding pension contributions and other items – of about £6.6m, up from roughly £4.2m today.
Last year, he was awarded a total package of just over £2.4m.
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The prospective increase would bring Mr Thwaite’s compensation more closely into line with peers including Charlie Nunn at Lloyds Banking Group and CS Venkatakrishnan at Barclays.
“CEO target pay will continue to remain lower than UK banking peers and is positioned around the FTSE-50 mid-market level,” Ms Wilson wrote in her letter to shareholders.
Mr Thwaite replaced Dame Alison Rose after she was forced to step down over the debanking row involving Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader.
Leading City investors who have been part of the consultation process are said to be overwhelmingly supportive of the pay overhaul, particularly in the wake of NatWest’s performance this year, which has seen its shares surge by 90% during 2024.
Regulators have also begun to relax rules imposed on bankers’ pay imposed after the 2008 crisis, with the Bank of England recently signalling plans to reduce the period over which share awards vest and must be held.
A NatWest Group spokesperson said: “Our remuneration policy is subject to shareholder approval at our AGM and we would not comment on the detail of any proposed changes.
“Our objective with our remuneration policy is to ensure alignment between executive pay, performance and the long-term value created for our shareholders.”
Executive pay has been a sensitive subject for NatWest, which was previously called Royal Bank of Scotland Group, ever since it was rescued with £45.5bn of taxpayers’ money during the financial crisis of 2008.
The pension package of Fred Goodwin, RBS’s former chief, and bonuses awarded to Stephen Hester, who was parachuted in to replace him and stabilise the bank became huge political headaches for the governments of Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
Since the sale of the taxpayer’s majority stake in RBS kicked off in 2015, bonuses have become a less contentious issue for the bank.
On Friday, NatWest announced that the Treasury’s stake had fallen below 10% for the first time since the bailout.
“We are pleased with the sustained momentum in reducing HM Treasury’s stake in NatWest Group,” it said.
“Returning the bank to full private ownership is a shared ambition and one that is in the interest of all our stakeholders.”
Sky News revealed in October that the government was on track to fully exit its NatWest shareholding by the middle of 2025 – or sooner if it launches an institutional placing of part of its remaining stake.
Even after the partial recovery in its valuation, taxpayers will see a loss running to billions of pounds from the emergency bailout.
On Friday, shares in NatWest closed at 405.5p, giving it a market capitalisation of £32.6bn.
Donald Trump has cancelled a loophole from today that had allowed consumers and businesses to be spared duties for sending low-value goods to the United States.
The so-called de minimis exemption had applied across the world before Trump 2.0 but the president has taken action – and the UK may soon follow suit – as part of his trade war.
The relief had allowed goods worth less than $800 (£595) to enter the US duty-free since 2016.
But now, low-cost packages face the same tariff rate as other, more expensive, goods.
The reasons for the latest bout of protectionism are numerous and the ramifications are country and purpose specific.
What is changing?
It was no accident that China was the first destination to be slapped with this rule change.
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The duty exemption on low-value Chinese goods was ended in May as US retailers, in fact those across the Western world, complained bitterly that they were being undercut by cheap clothing, accessories and household goods shipped by the likes of Shein and Temu.
From today, Mr Trump is expanding the end of the de minimis rule to the rest of the world.
Why is Trump doing this?
Image: Number of de minimis packages imported in to the US since 2018
The president is not acting purely to protect US businesses.
More duties mean more money for his tariff treasure chest, bolstering the goodies already pouring in from his base and reciprocal tariffs imposed on trading partners globally this year.
The Trump administration has also called out “deceptive shipping practices, illegal material and duty circumvention”.
It also believes many parcels claiming to contain low-value goods have been used to fuel the country’s supplies of fentanyl, with the importation of the illegal drug being used by the president as a reason for his wider trade war against allies including Canada.
How will it apply?
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New tariffs threaten fresh trade chaos
Under the new rules, only letters and personal gifts worth less than $100 (£74) will still be free of import duties.
Charges will depend on the tariff regime facing the country from where the goods are sent.
Fox example, a parcel containing products worth $600 would raise $180 in extra duties when sent from a country facing a 30% tariff rate.
It has sparked chaos in many countries, with postal services in places including Japan, Germany and Australia refusing to accept many items for delivery to the US until the practicalities of the new regime become clearer.
What about the UK?
All goods not meeting the £74 exemption criteria now face a 10% charge because that is the baseline tariff the US has slapped on imports from the UK.
We were spared, if you remember, higher reciprocal tariffs under the so-called “trade deal”.
How will the process work?
All shipping and delivery companies will be wading through the changes, with the big international operators such as DHL, FedEx and the like all promising to navigate the challenge.
Royal Mail said on Thursday that it would be the first international postal service to have a dedicated operation.
It said consumers could use its new postal delivery duties paid (PDDP) services both online and at Post Offices.
But it explained that business customers faced different restrictions to individuals.
Businesses would be charged a handling fee per parcel to cover additional costs and duties would be calculated based on where items were originally manufactured.
While business account customers could be handed an invoice for the duties, it explained that consumers would have to pay at the point of buying postage.
No customs declaration would be required, it concluded, for personal correspondence.
Is the US alone in doing this?
The answer is no, but it remains a fairly widespread relief globally.
The European Union, for example, removed de minimis breaks back in 2021, making all e-commerce imports to the bloc subject to VAT.
It is also now planning to introduce a fee of €2 on goods worth €150 or less to cover the costs of customs processing.
Should the UK do the same?
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July: The value of ‘de minimis’ imports into Britain
The UK has been under pressure for many years to follow suit and drop its own £135 duty-free threshold as retailers battle the cheap e-commerce competition from China we mentioned earlier.
A review was announced by the chancellor in April.
Sky News revealed in July how the total declared trade value of de minimis imports into the UK in the 2024-25 financial year was £5.9bn – a 53% increase on the previous 12-month period.
Any rise in revenue would be welcomed, not only by UK retailers, but by Rachel Reeves too as she looks to fill a renewed black hole in the public finances.
Sanjeev Gupta, the metals tycoon whose main British business was forced into compulsory liquidation last week, is facing a deepening probe by Australian regulators into his operations in the country.
Sky News has learnt that officials from the Australian Securities & Investment Commission (ASIC) last week served Mr Gupta’s Liberty Steel group with a new demand for information about its activities.
Sources said the regulator had also taken possession of a mobile phone belonging to Mr Gupta as part of the probe.
One insider said that other senior executives at the company may also have had electronic devices confiscated, although the accuracy of this claim could not be verified on Thursday morning.
Both ASIC and a spokesman for Mr Gupta’s GFG conglomerate refused to comment on the suggestion that a search warrant had been produced by the watchdog.
ASIC’s deepening investigation comes a month after it said that three of GFG Alliance’s companies had been ordered by the Supreme Court of New South Wales to lodge outstanding annual reports with it.
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It is the latest headache to hit Mr Gupta, whose companies remain under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office in the UK.
Last week, the Official Receiver took control of Speciality Steels UK following a winding-up petition from creditors led by Greensill Capital, the collapsed finance firm.
Mr Gupta remains intent on buying SSUK back, and has assembled financing from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, Sky News revealed last week.
SSUK employs nearly 1,500 people at steel plants in South Yorkshire, and makes highly engineered steel products for use in sectors such as aerospace, automotive and oil and gas.
“[Gupta Family Group] will now continue to advance its bid for the business in collaboration with prospective debt and equity partners and will present its plan to the official receiver,” Jeffrey Kabel, chief transformation officer, at Liberty Steel, said after SSUK’s collapse.
“GFG continues to believe it has the ideas, management expertise and commitment to lead SSUK into the future and attract major investment.”
“The plan that GFG presented to the court would have secured new investment in the UK steel industry, protecting jobs and establishing a sustainable operational platform under a new governance structure with independent oversight,” Mr Kabel added.
“Instead, liquidation will now impose prolonged uncertainty and significant costs on UK taxpayers for settlements and related expenses, despite the availability of a commercial solution.”
Mr Gupta wants to hand control of SSUK to his family in a bid to alleviate concerns about his influence.
One source close to the situation claimed that the ownership structure devised by Mr Gupta would be independent, ring-fenced from him and have “robust standards of governance”.
Behind Tata Steel and British Steel, SSUK is the third-largest steel producer in the country.
Other parts of Mr Gupta’s empire have been showing signs of financial stress for years.
Mr Gupta is said to have explored whether he could persuade the government to step in and support SSUK using the legislation enacted to take control of British Steel’s operations.
His overtures were dismissed by Whitehall officials.
He had previously sought government aid during the pandemic but that plea was also rejected by ministers.
The world’s most valuable company, and first to be valued at $4trn (£2.9trn), beat market expectations in keenly anticipated financial results.
Microchip maker Nvidia recorded revenues of $46.7bn (£34.6bn) in just three months up to July, latest financial data from the company showed, slightly better than Wall Street observers had expected.
The company’s performance is seen as a bellwether for artificial intelligence (AI) demand, with investors paying close attention to see whether the hype is overblown or if significant investment will pay off.
Originally a creator of gaming graphics hardware, Nvidia’s chips help power AI capability – and the UK’s most powerful supercomputer.
Nvidia’s graphics processors underpin products such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Gemini from Google.
Other tech giants – Microsoft, Meta and Amazon – make up Nvidia’s biggest customers and are paying large sums to embed AI into their products.
Why does it matter?
Nvidia has been central to the boom in AI development and the surge in tech stock valuations, which has seen stock markets reach record highs.
It represents about 8% of the value of the US S&P 500 stock market index of companies relied on to be stable and profitable.
Strong results will continue to fuel record highs in the market. Conversely, results that fail to live up to the hype could trigger a market tumble.
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Nvidia itself saw its share price rise more than 40% over the past year. Its value impacts anyone with cash in the US stock market, such as pension funds.
The S&P 500 rose 14% over the past year, and the tech-company-heavy NASDAQ gained 21%, largely thanks to Nvidia.
As such, its earnings can move markets as much as major economic or monetary policy announcements, like an interest rate decision.
Image: Sir Keir Starmer with NVIDIA chief Huang at London Tech Week. Pic: AP
What next?
Revenue rises are forecast to continue to rise as Nvidia said it expected a rise to roughly $54bn (£40bn) in the next three months, more than the $53.14bn (£39.3bn) anticipated by analysts.
This excludes any potential shipments to China as export of Nvidia’s H20 chip, designed with the Biden administration’s export crackdown on advanced AI powering chips in mind, had been banned under US national security grounds.
But in recent weeks, Nvidia and another chipmaker, AMD, reached an unprecedented agreement to pay the Trump administration a 15% portion of China sales in return for export licences to send chips to China.
There were no H20 sales at all to China in the second quarter of the year, the period for which results were released on Wednesday evening.
Previously, 13% of Nvidia’s revenue came from China, with nearly 50% coming from the US.
Market reaction
Despite the expectation-beating results, Nvidia shares were down in after-hours trading, as the massive revenue rises previously booked by the company were not repeated in the latest quarter.
Compared to a year ago, revenues rose 56% and 6% compared to the three months up to April.
The absence of Chinese sales in forecasts appeared to disappoint.