LONDON, March 21, 2026, 17:01 GMT
NatWest Group’s London-listed shares ended Friday at 520 pence, down 2.62% on the day and capping an 8.1% weekly slide, as a selloff in UK lenders accelerated after the Bank of England turned more hawkish and oil-led inflation worries spread across markets. The drop left NatWest trailing the FTSE 350 by 4.7 percentage points over five sessions. 1
The move matters because it came barely five weeks after NatWest reported a 24% jump in 2025 pretax profit, raised its long-term targets and launched a £750 million buyback, a plan to repurchase its own stock. Even so, the shares are now 25.1% below their 52-week high of £6.94 and down 20.3% since the start of 2026. 2
Part of this week’s move was mechanical. NatWest’s final 2025 dividend of 23p went ex-dividend on March 19 — meaning new buyers were no longer entitled to the payout — with payment due on May 5 if shareholders approve it at the bank’s April 28 annual meeting. 3
The bigger driver was rates. The FTSE 100 fell 1.4% on Friday and banking shares were among the heaviest drags after the BoE held rates at 3.75% but said it stood ready to act; Governor Andrew Bailey said the bank’s job was to make sure inflation “gets back to its 2% target”, while Pantheon Macroeconomics’ Rob Wood said surging energy prices were nearing a point where a hike could be warranted. 4
J.P. Morgan now expects quarter-point BoE rate rises in April and July, while Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and Barclays have all flagged a serious risk of a near-term move if energy prices stay high. That matters for NatWest because domestic lenders are being sold as a group again as investors weigh a hit to growth, even after Barclays and Lloyds lifted their own profitability goals earlier this year. 5
NatWest, for its part, kept buying into the weakness. A Friday filing showed it repurchased 5.74 million shares between March 16 and March 20 under its existing programme and plans to cancel them, leaving 7.98 billion shares in issue, excluding stock held in treasury. 6
Management is still trying to drag attention back to the longer story. Chief executive Paul Thwaite said in February the bank was “raising our ambition and sharpening our strategic focus” as it targeted return on tangible equity above 18% by 2028 — a bank measure of profit against shareholders’ core capital — and pushed deeper into wealth and other fee income. RBC Capital Markets analyst Benjamin Toms called the Evelyn Partners deal “transformational” and said it was “filling the gap” in NatWest’s affluent wealth offering. 2
But there is a clean downside case. Jefferies said in February the Evelyn price looked rich enough to cut NatWest earnings per share by about 2% through 2028 versus a no-deal case, while Aberdeen’s Luke Bartholomew said the wider economy could face a “long wait until the next cut” if the energy shock lingers. 7
For now, the market is not paying much for the longer-term plan. NatWest is still 13.5% above its level a year ago, according to LSEG/FTSE Russell data, but Friday’s close showed investors are putting macro risk ahead of buybacks and deal promises. 1
