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RE: Starling Bank — Acquisition by NatWest Group

SC
Sarah ChenPartner<s.chen@awarenessplus-llp.com>

to you

Hi, Hope you're well. I wanted to flag a matter that's just landed on my desk and get your initial thoughts ahead of our call with the client tomorrow morning. NatWest Group has approached Starling Bank with an informal acquisition proposal at a reported valuation of £2.5 billion. Starling is a profitable UK digital bank with approximately 4 million customers and a growing SME lending book. NatWest sees this as an opportunity to accelerate its digital strategy. A few issues I'd like you to think through before our call: The CMA will almost certainly review this given NatWest's existing share of the UK retail banking market. Starling also holds a significant volume of customer data, which raises questions under the UK GDPR on how that data can be used post-acquisition. Let me have your initial thoughts on the question below. Best, Sarah

Sarah Chen

Partner, Finance & Banking

Awareness Plus LLP

s.chen@awarenessplus-llp.com

Your Turn

Question 1

The CMA is likely to scrutinise this deal closely. Identify one specific competition concern the CMA might raise, and briefly explain how NatWest could address it to get the deal approved.

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Awareness+ played a big part in helping me prepare for assessment centres. The Macro Playbook gave me a clear framework for thinking about commercial law, rather than just a list of headlines to memorise. The Lawyer Simulation was particularly useful, as it mirrored the structure and pressure of real case studies and made me feel far more confident on the day.
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I found that the Awareness+ MacroPlaybook was the missing resource in helping me successfully prepare for my assessment centres. After failing my first very vacation scheme AC, I found that it was my commercial awareness that was falling short. Keeping up with the news gave me a good understanding of the external market and geopolitical developments, but I couldn't identify or articulate how these events translated into real-world implications for businesses. Through reading and answering the questions in each section of the MacroPlaybook, I was able to put my knowledge of current affairs into practice and speak more confidently about how macroeconomic conditions specifically affect business operations and strategy. This improved my interview technique and ultimately, gained me my place on the vacation scheme.
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