6.1 NatWest Group (formerly RBS Group)

CompanyAmount (£ million*)
Airbus311
BAE Systems72
Honeywell International639
Jacobs Solutions116
Leonardo178
Rolls Royce252
Total1,568
* The GBP amounts in this column were converted from USD amounts using the exchange rate 1 USD = 0.78861 GBP and are approximate due to rounding of the original USD amounts.

NatWest Group is headquartered in Edinburgh and holds around £700 billion in assets.[1] The bank was known as RBS Group until July 2020. Key subsidiaries of the group include Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Ulster Bank, as well as private banking subsidiary Coutts & Co.[2]

NatWest Group has a policy which only partially restricts investment in nuclear weapons producers (see section 6.1.1) and the group held investments worth £1.6 billion in 6 companies between January 2021 and August 2023 (see above table).[3]

These investments were made in the form of loans and through the underwriting of bond issuances.

Action

Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland has been working with our partners, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Netherlands-based peace organisation PAX, and the UK Nuclear Weapons Financing Research Group to try to persuade NatWest Group to strengthen its policy.

s

Meetings were held with the bank in 2020 and in March 2021 we sent an open letter to NatWest Group’s CEO, Alison Rose. The letter draws attention to the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons and highlights the recent entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It calls on the bank to comprehensively exclude nuclear weapons from investment and was co-signed over 40 civil society organisations, including trade union councils, faith organisations and environmental NGOs.

If you are a customer of Bank of Scotland or another NatWest Group subsidiary, please write to NatWest Group using the template email at https://investinginchange.uk/action/natwest-2/. You can encourage others to do the same by sharing the customisable posts on this page using the hashtags #ChangeNatWest and #nuclearban: https://www.icanw.org/change_natwest.

NOTES

[1] See p 74 of NatWest Group’s Annual Report and Accounts 2023: https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/results-center/16022024/nwg-annual-report-and-accounts-2023.pdf

[2] https://www.natwestgroup.com/our-brands.html.

[3] See S Snyder, Untenable Investments: Nuclear weapon producers and their financiers (PAX-ICAN, 2024): https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/untenable-investments/.