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With the recent termination of several Wells Fargo consent orders and speculation about when the Federal Reserve’s asset cap on the bank may be lifted, it could be easy – especially in a hyper-domestic news cycle – to miss a massive (overseas) development in bank independence.

The U.K. government on Friday sold the last of its shares in NatWest, freeing the bank into private ownership nearly 17 years after bailing it out during the 2007-08 financial crisis.

At the time, Royal Bank of Scotland, as NatWest was known before 2020, had bought Dutch bank ABN Amro for £49 billion ($79.4 billion) but became mired with toxic mortgage-backed securities.

RBS’s asset total stood at about £2.2 trillion – making it the world’s largest bank, with nearly double the U.K.’s annual economic output. And the bank would have failed without a £45.5 billion bailout from the government.

The U.K.’s Treasury on Friday noted that it received £35 billion from share sales, dividends and fees throughout its rescue of NatWest — but that’s still a £10.5 billion loss. 

“Nearly two decades ago, the then government stepped in to protect millions of savers and businesses from the consequences of the collapse of RBS,” U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in a statement Friday. “That was the right decision then to secure the economy and NatWest’s return to private ownership turns the page on a significant chapter in this country’s history.”

At the rescue’s peak, the government owned 84.4% of NatWest. But the U.K. government has rapidly accelerated the sell-down of its stake in the bank: It owned roughly 38% of the lender as recently as December 2023.

Likewise, U.S. regulators’ hold over Wells Fargo has loosened considerably in 2025. Seven of the banks’ consent orders have been terminated since January, with just the Fed’s $1.95 trillion asset cap – in place for seven years – remaining.

NatWest returned to profitability in 2017 and restored its dividend the next year. But the government held off on fully returning the bank to private ownership for several reasons: political uncertainty, low interest rates in the post-COVID era (which would have further lessened Britain’s return on investment). The U.K. stalled the NatWest release amid tariff uncertainty at the start of the Trump administration in the U.S.