Dame Alison resigned after admitting she leaked private banking information to the BBC
Source - Daily Telegraph 23/08/23
NatWest’s plan to hand Dame Alison Rose a £2.4m payout has been branded a “sick joke” by Nigel Farage.
The banking giant said on Wednesday that its former chief executive was in line to receive her £1.2m salary for the year, as well as another £1.2m in shares over a five-year period and £115,566 in pension payments.
The pay deal totals £2.43m, although NatWest said it reserved the right to “claw back” payments depending on ongoing investigations.
Dame Alison is currently seeing out her 12-month notice period after resigning last month.
In a video posted on Twitter, Mr Farage said: “When I heard about it I thought perhaps it was a sick joke.
“Surely you can’t break client confidentiality, surely you can’t breach virtually every important rule in the FCA codebook, and you can’t then lie about it after you’ve briefed the BBC and still receive a £2.43m payout, and yet that’s exactly what’s happened to Alison Rose.”
Dame Alison was forced to step down after admitting she wrongly told a BBC journalist that Mr Farage’s bank account at Coutts, a subsidiary of NatWest, was shut down because he wasn’t wealthy enough to meet its thresholds.
Instead, it emerged that the bank held a 40-page dossier on Mr Farage’s political views detailing the “significant reputational risks of being associated with him”.
The documents said Mr Farage’s views were “at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”.
The board of NatWest initially tried to defend Dame Alison. However, she resigned from the bank after the Government put pressure on her to go.
NatWest, which is 38.6pc taxpayer-owned, faces pressure not to reward its former chief executive.
Conservative MP Harriet Baldwin, who chairs the Treasury Select Committee, said the bank should consider using claw back rules to minimise the payout to Ms Rose and the former chief executive of Coutts, Peter Flavel, who was also forced to resign.
She said: “I think the remuneration committee of the board will want to look closely at this for the two departed CEOs when the external investigation is completed as some of the compensation will continue to be subject to claw back.”
The planned pay deal also drew criticism from other senior Tories.
Former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “People who are fired for gross misconduct do not deserve payouts”.
Jake Berry, ex-Tory chair, also said it was a “disgraceful reward” for failure, while former Brexit secretary David Davis urged the Government to step in.
Whitehall sources indicated that ministers are waiting to see the result of the law firm Travers Smith’s investigation into the scandal, commissioned by NatWest.
NatWest said it would continue to review Dame Alison’s payout amid ongoing investigations into the scandal.
However, Mr Farage accused the bank of kicking the investigation “into the long grass”.
Dame Alison, who joined the bank as a graduate trainee in 1992, had been chief executive for four years before stepping down on July 25.
In a statement, NatWest said: “Ms Rose’s notice period and the payments she will continue to receive for the notice period will be reviewed on a continuing basis, having regard to the internal and external investigations relating to the account closure arrangements at Coutts and associated events.
“Decisions on these awards, along with any decisions regarding other remuneration matters, will be made taking into account the findings of the investigations, as appropriate.”
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