Westminster Bank of Westminster Bank, became first chairman of the fifth largest bank in the world. In 1969 David Robarts, former chairman of National Provincial, assumed Stirling's position. The statutory process of integration was completed in 1969 and the new company, National Westminster Bank Limited, opened its doors for business on 1 January 1970. NatWest, as it became known, is now part of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group. Westminster Bank Westminster Bank was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1834 until its merger into the National Westminster Bank in 1970; it continued to exist as a
British Linen Bank branch network was given as joint third to the Royal Bank and the Commercial Bank of Scotland. British Linen, now formally a bank, had distanced itself from the amalgamations in Scottish banking and by 1914 it had "declined from a position somewhere in the middle of the scale to the bottom". By the end of the First World War British Linen realised it needed an association with a larger bank with good overseas connections and agreement was reached for Barclays to buy the bank in 1919. As with other Scottish banks, geographic sensitivities led to British Linen being referred to