Royal Mail to be floated on stock exchange

elmarko

elmarko

elmarko

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23249466

It seems the privatisation of Royal Mail may be going ahead (unless we have another last minute u-turn).

What are the thoughts on here?, do we have any examples of where a previously publicly owned service after privatisation has achieved it's aimed goals? (Energy, Transport, Rails etc).

Do we think services will improve & efficiency increase?, or will prices simply go up & jobs slashed with profits funnelled over-seas?.

My view?

At first thought I'd guess it will be a disaster - but got some reading to do tonight before forming a more in depth view on the matter.
 
Good, Royal Mail isn't like other public industries, it's core market is dwindling. It's no longer an essential service. Between the Internet and the insane prices on parcels. They're pretty underused as it is.

Essential services should be kept public, but somehow ran in a more private way. Utilities/public transport etc
 
Given that the experiences I've had with Royal Mail have been significantly better than those with courier companies I would have to say that I view privatising it to be a bad thing. Standards will be likely to decrease and prices rise ... like with other privatisations ...
 
RM have been outstanding at regularly delivering adverts to me, but about the same as other couriers when it comes to things I actually want.
 
Hasn't this basically already happened - didn't the government started offering out the contracts for collection to 3rd party companies, such as TNT Mail.

They have then cherry-picked the best contracts, such as utility companies/banks, who send out thousands of letters each day from a single building, roughly sort them into area, then pass them over to Royal Mail, who have to deliver to every address in the country?
 
I see this resulting in an end to universal to the door deliveries and an end to universal prices. There may well be situations, particularly for non-mainland locations, where mail services are completely abandoned.

It's the maintenance of this service that currently handicaps RM, but it's also the main reason for keeping it as a public service.

I wonder if it will lose the ability to run it's own 'court service'.
 
Quick question, once privatised will they lose the VAT exception, resulting in an instant price rise? (along with actual expected prise rises).
 
Confused said:
Hasn't this basically already happened - didn't the government started offering out the contracts for collection to 3rd party companies, such as TNT Mail.

They have then cherry-picked the best contracts, such as utility companies/banks, who send out thousands of letters each day from a single building, roughly sort them into area, then pass them over to Royal Mail, who have to deliver to every address in the country?
Click to expand...

Yep, they shafted RM massively, this as ~2004 iirc.
Basically the set a charge rm had to charge, TNT and others under cut RM for the easy contracts (big companies, so one collection point) then gave the letters to RM to actually deliver at a loss.


anticonscience said:
My view is stamp prices will go north of £1 quickly.
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The problem with this is?
Paying what it costs to actually send something. It's no longer a vital thing to do, there's very few things you have to send, the few things you do have to send should be Special Delivery anyway which allready costs more than that.
 
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I honestly can't see how this'll work, RM is already ridiculously expensive as it is to send letters or parcels. Surely with today's announcement, it'll get more expensive and thusly less people will use it which will bring about it's demise?

RM are having a boom at the moment with the advent of eBay sales, but I can't see that lasting forever with eBay/Paypal's rising prices. So where's the comfort for investors? Will be genuinely interested to see the uptake of share buys, and glad that they've considered the postal worker in all of this by giving them a 10% stake.

That said, I doubt it'll stop them striking as the CWC have already suggested will happen.

Either way, I'd bet private courier companies aren't too worried about today's news.
 
Its just stupid no thinking it through or anything. Hand over an engrained monopolistic business straight into private hands. Its a gold mine to whomever owns it, similar to BT.

I dont agree with privatisation but there's ways to do it. They couldnt give a monkeys though, who cares as long a we get into our rich mates hands as fast as possible.
 
Tax payers will still end up paying, if they are going to make it into a private company there should be no tax payers money going to it.
RM were losing money because they had to subsidise companies like TNT etc..
Plus RM have been making profits each year and those profit have been increasing.
 
If it goes the way of BT or British Gas I think I might need to buy some shares...

Chances are it'll be a massive loss though, filled with bad investment, cutting of services and basically ending up like the post office at the start of going postal....
 
matdom said:
Tax payers will still end up paying, if they are going to make it into a private company there should be no tax payers money going to it.
RM were losing money because they had to subsidise companies like TNT etc..
Plus RM have been making profits each year and those profit have been increasing.
Click to expand...
To be honest, that was my concern - that we would end up still paying for it as the private side will just cherry pick the profitable parts & leave the remaining (expensive & difficult) areas for the tax-payer.

Pretty much exactly what happened with our rail network, privatisation of the nice profitable side running the trains with the tax-payer covering the expensive network costs.

Corporate welfare at it's best.
 
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