Talk:NatWest/Archives/2021

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Post 2008 crash NatWest Global Restructure Group business lending scandal

I was surprised today to find that our article does not mention this scandal at all, although it caused the demise of thousands of basically-sound businesses. The culpability of NatWest, pressured by its majority shareholder HM Government, was confirmed (at the latest) in 2016, and IIRC, a number of court cases resulted once the bankrupted past-owners of some of the businesses managed to find enough money to go to court. The scandal was

firstly that the government wanted the businesses to fail, to release their assets to the bank as major creditor, so the bank, which had effectively become insolvent in the 2008 financial crash and therefore been bailed out by HMG as "too big to fail", needed less support by the government, and
secondly that the bank bowed to the pressure and (presumably in contravention of their contracts with their customers) worked against its customers' interests to achieve this, partly by charging outrageous sums for its Global Restructuring Group to (erroneously) state that the business could not be saved, so that the bank cancelled its loans to the company, making it clearly insolvent (unable to pay its bills as they became due), so that as the major creditor, now with the GRG's fees added to the foreclosed loan, the bank could arrange sale of the company's assets and keep most of the proceeds.

At least, that's how I remember it, and the BBC published an article including a precis of the scandal two months ago: [1]. At first sight, it seems strange that the government would do that, since it meant that they would have to pay unemployment benefits to the perhaps 200,000 people put out of work when their businesses closed, but spending money on that purpose was a vote winner, while spending money supporting the "cruel, greedy banks which had put people out of work" was a vote loser. As the BBC article says, the boss of the bank's GRG stated in court that HM Treasury's Asset Protection Agency had close oversight of the process, and signed off on key decisions.

I don't have time to research it myself at present, so it would be great if someone else can do it. The country is once again in a potential financial crisis, and certainly in a government-spending crisis, with the government Treasury, still majority shareholder of NatWest, warning that many businesses will not survive. So the scam is topical at present. Enginear (talk) 19:58, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

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