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July 26 (UPI) -- The CEO of NatWest, Britain's third-largest bank, resigned Wednesday in a row over the closure of the private banking account of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Alison Rose agreed to step down as chief executive of the banking group with immediate effect by "mutual consent," the bank said in a news release that gave no reason for her departure.
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"The board and Alison Rose have agreed, by mutual consent, that she will step down as CEO of the NatWest Group. It is a sad moment," said Howard Davies, Chairman of the NWG Board which had only hours earlier issued a statement saying that it had full confidence in her.
Rose resigned amid mounting political pressure after Farage complained to the bank and the BBC over a report that his account with Coutts -- NatWest's private banking arm -- was closed for "commercial" reasons after his balance fell below the $1.3 million minimum threshold, which Rose admitted Tuesday came from her.
She denied, however, revealing any of Farage's personal financial information.
Farage accused NatWest of illegally disclosing personal financial information and subsequently obtained internal documents that revealed the decision to shut his account was in fact because his political views were incompatible with those of the bank.
Reports late Tuesday cited "significant concerns" from sources close to the prime minister's office and the chancellor about Rose's future, followed by headlines in the early editions of newspapers of emergency boardroom talks at NatWest.
Farage, a former stockbroker turned MEP and leader of the party that forced the Brexit referendum, wrote on social media that the rest of NatWest's board should also resign and vowed he would be the "voice" of other blameless victims of politically correct and overzealous banks.
"Dame Alison Rose has gone. Others must follow. I hope that this serves as a warning to the banking industry. We need both cultural and legal changes to a system that has unfairly shut down many thousands of innocent people. I will do my best to be their voice," Farage wrote.
NatWest's board said it had replaced Rose with Paul Thwaite, current CEO of the bank's Commercial and Institutional business, to run the group in the interim ahead of a process to appoint a permanent successor that it pledged would take place in "due course."
