Italian insurance group Assicurazioni Generali has expressed interest before the German Ministry of Finance to buy a 25percent stake in German Postbank AG, the banking unit of local logistics and postal services operator Deutsche Post. Other companies interested in the deal are French bank Credit Agricole SA and Deutsche Bank.
Read MoreMarket experts believe that Deutsche Postbank, the banking subsidiary of German postal service operator Deutsche Post, will go public after all and regard it as unlikely that the flotation will be cancelled. Deutsche Post, which is planning to place up to 50 per cent minus one share in Postbank on 21 June 2004, opposes a sale of its subsidiary to Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, and is determined to keep a majority stake in the retail bank.
Read MoreThe Royal Mail’s chairman has said the business was on course to be successful and make a profit despite criticism of letters being lost in the post and allegations of theft by staff.
Allan Leighton told the annual conference of the National Federation of Sub Postmasters that the move into banking was key to the success of the organisation.
Read MorePaul Jackson, chief executive of mail industry consultancy Triangle Management Services, has a stark message for small firms. He says the current disruption to the postal service is “a wake-up call”. “Small businesses should stop moaning and recognise the world is changing,” he says. “They have a bargain at the moment and that bargain will not last for ever.” Price comparisons supplied by the Royal Mail suggest that Britain’s flat-rate 28p first class postage for letters under 60g compares favourably with the price of similar services across Europe, the US and Japan. You would pay 37.8p minimum per letter in Germany, 35.3p in France, 48.1p in Italy and 36.6p in Japan. Mr Jackson says that in countries where the postal services had been opened up to competition, like Sweden, prices for small businesses had increased. “In the long term when competition enters the marketplace the small user prices will go up. They should think about using mail less.”
Read MorePostbank IPO to net DPWN €3 billion
Read MoreThe Royal Mail never had to deliver its next day first-class letter service before midday. It just did. But small businesses have come to rely on invoices, legal documents and customer promotions arriving in the morning as part of the smooth running.
The fuss over the abolition of the second post is a nonsense for most firms as for them the service ceased years ago. Only 4pc of all the daily post was being delivered in this way before Royal Mail acted. What is more galling for small businesses is the apparent abolition of the morning post and, in some cases, daily post altogether.
Read MoreDigiStamp has asked the Postal Rates Commission (PRC) to hold hearings as to whether, as it claims, the US Postal Service’s Electronic Postmark service is anticompetitive and illegal and should therefore be discontinued.
DigiStamp CEO Rick Borgers is also planning to stir things up by reaching out other companies on the whole issue of the post competing against private industry.
Read MoreThe trade unions of the French railways (SNCF), post office (La Poste) and the Paris airport authority Aeroports de Paris (ADP) have issued a joint warning of their intention to hold a strike on Thursday in protest against proposed changes to the three companies. SNCF employees, for example, oppose the rail operator’s plans to restructure its freight division, while those of La Poste’s 130 mail-sorting centres are stopping work to, in their own words, defend their future and their jobs.
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