John Roberts of Consignia – comments on World at One
Chief executive of Consignia, John Roberts, told the World At One the company was going to “fight very hard” to compete.
He said Consignia was “certainly not” a new Railtrack in the making.
“I think we’re in a completely different position. One of the things that we want to do is to complete a range of changes that I announced recently, including saving about a billion pounds in our cost base, to make us really fit, to compete in what is going to be a competitive world.”
Consignia was concerned about the speed at which the proposals were going to be introduced, he added.
“I don’t think we’ve been particularly surprised about the kind of areas that they’ve suggested for competition.
“I think we knew and we’ve known for a long time ever since the idea of regulation was put forward, that competition was going to be the inevitable result of that.
“What I think is important for us is that … we are a company that’s going through enormous change.
“We have been a wholly government-owned monopoly. We still are, even though we’re now a company, and we need to go through some of the changes that privatisation in the past has created in utilities.
“I think the issue for me is that we’re being asked to do that and to take the full weight of regulation at a much faster pace than any of those privatised utilities were.
“The key issue is that nobody actually knows what the result of this kind of regulatory change is going to be, because nowhere else in the world has anybody tried it this way.
“We are all working in the dark … Until we see what the market is going to do, we won’t know.
“One of the things that does concern us is that the most profitable part of the network, the bulk mail is the first to be opened up, I can understand why they’ve done that, but it is the area where we make money which we then use to sustain the universal service.
“My concern is that if you get this wrong, there’s no going back.
“The key thing for us is that we do want to compete, we are going to compete and we will fight very hard in these markets.”
