Stinnes major shareholder, German energy group E.ON, has revealed that, it is looking to dispose of its 65% interest in the company. The remaniing 35% is floated on the Frankfurt stock exchange.
One analyst said: “EON has indicated that it is looking for a buyer for its stake in Stinnes. If they dont find one to take their stock outright, they may reduce their holding through share sales on the exchange.”
Maersk Logistics has been selected by IBM Corporation to enter into a three-year contract engaging Maersk Logistics to provide ocean freight forwarding services for the IBM Corporation.
Read MoreThe government has decided to forego the payment of a dividend from Consignia PLC for this financial year, releasing 64 mln stg back into the company, said Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
She told the House of Commons the move will help the company during itsperiod of restructuring.
Hewitt said the 15,000 job cuts over the next three years are “unavoidable if we are to create a high quality postal service”.
Read MoreAMICUS, the union for Post Office Managers, today (25/3/02) condemned Consignia’s announcement of a further 15,000 job cuts.
Peter Skyte, National Officer for the CMA said:
“This blow to Parcel Force has resulted from Consignia’s flawed strategy of chasing volume in the business parcels market at knock down prices and pressure from the Postcomm regulator to end the cross subsidy of services.
“Given Consignia’s current financial and organisational difficulties the only way forward for the company overall is to work in partnership with the unions to safeguard as many jobs as possible through reassignment, early retirement and voluntary redundancy.”
Consignia said it will issue a statement this morning on theprogress of the ongoing reorganisation at the post office but declined tocomment on reports it is to make 40,000 job cuts as part of the exercise.
“Everything that was printed (in the newspapers) so far is pure speculation.We will issue a statement later this morning,” a Consignia spokeswoman said.
Press reports today and over the weekend said the company will shed 40,000of its 220,000 workforce, starting with up to 15,000 job cuts at the loss-makingParcelforce unit.
Read MoreThe postal workers’ union has warned it will stop at nothing to prevent compulsory redundancies as Consignia embarks today on a restructuring expected to lead to thousands of job losses.
Billy Hayes, the Liverpudlian leftwinger in charge of the Communication Workers’ Union, pledged he would not allow his members to be axed. In an interview with the Financial Times, he also attacked proposals by PostComm, the regulator, for a rapid liberalisation of the sector and warned Labour that the CWU was rethinking funding of the party.
Allan Leighton, the interim chairman of Consignia, has received backing from ministers for the first stage of his radical restructuring plan as a condition of taking the job on a permanent basis.
Publicly, the Department of Trade and Industry has maintained that the financial crisis facing the Post Office group is a matter for its independent management team to resolve.
However, the redundancies due to be announced today – of up to 15,000 – will require an estimated Pounds 400m from Consignia’s Pounds 2bn reserves to pay for generous severance packages.
Consignia will today pull out of the market for delivering non-urgent business parcels in the biggest admission yet that the government-owned postal group is failing to compete with the private sector.
Allan Leighton, who is expected to be confirmed as the group’s permanent chairman, will argue that Consignia’s parcels division, Parcelforce, is losing too much money to continue serving all customers.
Instead it will concentrate only on express deliveries and the basic parcel services for domestic customers required under its universal service obligations.
The retreat will result in the loss of nearly half of Parcelforce’s 12,000 jobs, slightly more than had been expected when the threat of substantial job losses emerged on Friday.
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