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Former NatWest chief executive Alison Rose has joined private equity firm Charterhouse in her first role since leaving the UK high-street lender following the “debanking” of Nigel Farage last year.
Rose was made a senior adviser at the firm, which is one of the UK’s oldest buyout groups, in April, according to people familiar with the matter.
One of the UK’s highest-profile female business leaders, Rose stepped down by mutual consent from NatWest last July amid a row over the “debanking” of Farage, the leader of Reform UK and former head of the UK Independence and Brexit parties.
As part of her departure from NatWest, Rose forfeited £7.6mn in outstanding pay and bonuses she could have been due from the bank because the board judged that she did not qualify as a “good leaver”.
She was entitled to receive her 2023 salary, pension and fixed-pay share allowance, which totalled £1.75mn for the remainder of her notice period until this July.
Rose, who received a damehood in the 2023 honours list, had admitted to unintentionally misleading a BBC reporter into writing a story that said NatWest’s private bank, Coutts, cut ties with Farage for purely commercial reasons and that the decision had nothing to do with his political views.
An independent review by law firm Travers Smith later found that while the decision to oust Farage as a client was primarily commercial and therefore lawful, it had failed to communicate the decision properly and then mishandled his complaint.
She denied sharing confidential customer data and said she had incomplete information at the time. Her name was subsequently axed from a government-commissioned review into female entrepreneurship that had been dubbed the “Rose review”.
Farage, who is currently standing as an MP for Reform in the UK general election, obtained and released a dossier of internal documents from Coutts that showed its reputational risk committee had accused him of “pandering to racists” and being a “disingenuous grifter”, which was “at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”.
Charterhouse, which was spun out of HSBC via a management buyout in 2001, has roots going back to 1934. It has about €5bn in assets under management and specialises in European mid-market companies.
Charterhouse declined to comment, while representatives for Rose confirmed her new role. The hiring of Rose was first reported by trade title Private Equity News.
Following Rose’s exit, NatWest picked Paul Thwaite, previously head of its commercial bank, to lead the state-backed lender.
https://www.ft.com/content/c3d09620-fa23-43b2-93db-d73144a4b7f2
