NatWest will buy back about 5% of its shares from the UK government for £1.2bn, reducing the Treasury’s voting power in the bank to below 50% for the first time since 2008.

The over-the-counter purchase of nearly 550 million shares, equivalent to 4.9 percent of the outstanding shares, means the Treasury will hold a 48 percent stake. The British lender will buy the shares at Friday’s London close of 220.5 pence. The deal is expected to settle on Wednesday.

The government owns the majority of NatWest, the bank once known as the Royal Bank of Scotland because it was rescued at the height of the financial crisis.

it has push back repeatedly The deadline to sell the remaining stake comes as political and economic uncertainty hits the bank’s share price.

RBS and the government have said in the past that because NatWest is a much smaller bank than it was before the financial crisis, and the 2008 takeover was a rescue deal, not an investment.

A booming mortgage market and over £1bn in loan impairments have been written off, helping the bank achieve net income It was £2.95bn last year, a sharp reversal from a £753m loss in 2020.

Shares of NatWest have risen nearly 15% over the past year.