Curtin to stamp his mark on An Post
DONAL Curtin, who took up the reins as chief executive of An Post in mid-2003, is one to watch in 2004.
He was a strong contender for the top job at the ESB – where he had held down anumber of senior positions – only to lose out to Padraig McManus.
When he took over from John Hynes, few were surprised that Communications Minister Dermot Ahern had opted for an outsider to tackle the mounting difficulties at the State mail company.
Within weeks, Cork-city born Curtin had initiated a strategic review of the areas where An Post was losing money, intending to set out a framework for the future direction of the company.
By the end of July, An Post had announced the worst loss in its history of 70m with noindication that the loss-making spiral was being halted. More worryingly, the company had been recruiting additional staff, even through Mr Hynes had said he was seeking 1,100 redundancies.
An Post confirmed that the job-shedding was running at least 18 months behind schedule while losses mounted.
Between his arrival and the end of 2003, An Post began a cull of its middle and senior management ranks. There have been widespread departures from the group at management level.
The annual bonus was cut, expenses pared back and foreign travel to conferencesbanned.
An Post also managed to get an increase in the basic price of the stamp from 41c to 48c, which is worth an estimated 17m a year to the State firm.
The big challenge for Curtin comes this year as he prepares to remove over 1,200 staff from the company. Ancillary activities, which were expanded by his predecessor, are expected to be sold off to raise cash.
An Post is no longer handling the thorny TV licence collection system. The Prize Bondjoint venture with FEXCO is also being examined, as are the company’s mobile phonetop-up businesses in Ireland and Spain.
If it is any consolation for Curtin, his colleagues around Europe are facing the samedifficulties. E-mail and texting are growing in popularity, and postal services everywheremust now rein in their costs to reflect sluggish turnover growth, or even turnover decline.
An indication of the difficulties facing Curtin came before Christmas when An Post had to return to local sorting rather than put all its faith in the new automatic sorting centres.
The company does not want to repeat the experience of Christmas 2002 when two million cards failed to get delivered on time.
Jim Aughney
Copyright © 2003 Irish Independent. Source: Financial Times Information Limited – Europe Intelligence Wire.
