Royal Mail

Royal Mail Remuneration

I always thought that being a Chief Executive and being paid millions was a 24/7 job. I am amazed the Royal Mail could not recruit somebody from the millions of people who live in the UK. I am very angry that the details of Mr Back's £5.8million payout were buried in note 26 on page 144 of the company's annual report and not explained in the first paragraph of the Remuneration Committee Chair's statement. Hiding the pay of the new Chief ...
25th July 2018 Read more

Royal Mail and Myners’ report on other Government sell-offs

The Government sell-off of a major stake in Royal Mail was controversial in many ways. It proved to be even more so when the placing price of £3.30 was rapidly eclipsed by a market price which rose to as high as £6 although it's been mostly downhill since (at the time of writing it's 420p). The long term holders who were given priority in the share allocation soon turned out to be anything but with 44% of the shares changing hands ...
23rd December 2014 Read more

Royal Mail IPO – the wrong kind of encouragement

There was a very intelligent letter in the FT today from a Dr Alex May. To quote: “I fear the sale will distort public perception of investing in shares”. It went on to suggest that it would mislead people into believing that making money in shares was easy, and implied it would encourage speculation rather than sound investment in a portfolio of shares.Even more astonishing was the revelation on the front page that some investment banks valued it at nearer the ...
19th October 2013 Read more

Royal Mail flotation – private investors losing out both ways

Some ShareSoc members are very disappointed that they will not get any shares in the Royal Mail flotation because they subscribed for more then £10,000 worth. These are my personal comments: This seems to be discrimination against the moderately wealthy and those who just happened to have some spare cash in the bank.  Either everyone should have got the same allocation of £750 of shares, or there should have been a graduated scaling back. It's just illogical.What is being done is that ...
11th October 2013 Read more

Royal Mail flotation – first thoughts

Some sketchy information on the prospective flotation of Royal Mail has been released. You can obtain it here: www.gov.uk/royalmailshares and register your interest. Note that you don’t have to do so via a stockbroker but can purchase the shares directly, which may be preferable.Here are some initial comments and what to look out for when you read the prospectus in due course (which all investors should do before investing):First it’s worth pointing out that they are privatising Royal Mail and Parcelforce, ...
16th September 2013 Read more