The week that was: 29 January 2010
Adam Crozier is the latest big industry name to leave his top executive role… Welcome to this week’s news round-up from Post&Parcel – get comfortable, it’s a good ‘un.
It came as a big surprise to Post&Parcel when the news that Adam Crozier was leaving Royal Mail dropped into our inbox. He will take up the post of chief executive at ITV. The group’s chief executive will remain at Royal Mail for the “next few months” as the company searches for his successor. Crozier’s departure comes as a further blow to Royal Mail after Post Office managing director Alan Cook announced his decision to retire earlier this month. Group chairman Donald Brydon sang Crozier’s praises, saying: “Adam has done and continues to do a remarkable job in leading Royal Mail through a major transformation in extremely difficult market circumstances. The Group benefits from his strong leadership and commitment to ensuring that Royal Mail has the strength and profitability to continue to support the Universal Service and to build the platform for our future growth.” Despite of Brydon’s praise, opinion on his legacy remains divided. Check out what we had to say on the matter here.
There was double joy for TNT this week, as the company ironed out a couple of wranglings concerning employment issues. Ttogether with the trade unions, TNT reached an agreement on the collective labour agreement (CLA) and the social plan in the Netherlands. This agreement “satisfies the starting points of the talks of both the trade unions and TNT Post. The TNT CLA will run from 1 April 2009 to 31 December 2011. All TNT employees in the Netherlands will receive a 0.7% pay rise as of 1 January 2010. A differentiation will be made from 1 April 2010 in the form of separate CLAs to be agreed for the entities TNT Post, TNT Express and TNT Post Parcel Service. A 1% rise has been agreed as of 1 January 2011 and 0.2% as of 1 October 2011 for the TNT Post entities,” said a company statement. Secondly, TNT said it was “pleased” after the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, Germany, ruled that the ordinance on the postal minimum wage of EUR 9.80 is null and void. The basis for this decision is that the German State failed to give TNT Post in Germany the opportunity to make written comments prior to the issuance of the ordinance, as required by law.
Over to Asia now, where SingPost released its third quarter results. The company announced a growth in group revenue of 12.7% to S$139.6m. The revenue would have registered a marginal decline of 0.6% without the consolidation of Quantium Solutions, on a comparable basis with the same quarter last year when Quantium Solutions was a joint venture, announced SingPost. “Mail revenue declined by 1.2% to S$94.4m as a result of lower domestic mail and philatelic contributions. Logistics revenue, which includes revenue from Quantium Solutions, grew 166% to S$49.2m. Without the consolidation of revenue from Quantium Solutions, Logistics revenue showed a decline compared to the same quarter of last year. In Retail, revenue improved by 4.1% to S$16.9m on the back of higher contributions from financial services,” said a company spokesman.
And finally…
Industry players will be able to nominate their companies for the prestigious World Mail Awards, organised by Triangle Management Services, from Monday. The Awards ceremony will be held on 15 June in Copenhagen. For more details go to www.mailawards.com
