Reuters
Britain's plans to sell shares in NatWest bank to the public this summer will be a test of a long-awaited upswing in the UK stock market that saw the FTSE-100 hit a record high this week - months after similar milestones for benchmark indexes elsewhere. Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt hopes the sale of government-owned stock in the bailed-out bank, Britain's biggest casualty of the 2008 global financial crisis, will spur Britons to invest more in UK-listed companies. In November, Hunt evoked memories of Margaret Thatcher by saying it was "time to get Sid investing again", a reference to the marketing campaign the former prime minister launched for the privatisation of British Gas in the 1980s.