All a coincidence?
The channel that former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has used most for his tirades against NatWest bank following the closure of his Coutts account has been GB News.
Today it’s also been revealed that the owner of GB News has made a multi-million pound gain on its bet against NatWest shares following the exit of Dame Alison Rose as a result of the closure of Farage’s account.
All a coincidence?
The Telegraph reports: “Regulatory filings show that Marshall Wace has the biggest short position in the lender’s shares meaning it stands to gain from falls in the bank’s market price.
“The fund netted paper gains of around £5m on Wednesday after NatWest’s share price slumped more than 3.7pc after the departure of its chief executive Dame Alison Rose, which wiped more than £850m off the value of the lender.”
Dame Alison quit after admitting to being the source for an inaccurate BBC Story which had claimed that the reason for Farage’s account closure was because he no longer met the wealth threshold for Coutts, which is NatWest Group’s wealth management division.
She quit earlier in the week, after mounting pressure from Downing Street, the chancellor and other senior cabinet ministers to do so. Farage insisted the closure of his account was due to political reasons after he obtained a 40-page document which looked at his suitability as a Coutts customer. The document flagged concerns that he was “xenophobic and racist”, and also questioned the reputational risk of having Mr Farage as a client.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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