Year: 2005

German trade union Ver.di has called for an extension of the monopoly held by Deutsche Post, the German postal service operator, on the market for the delivery of letters in Germany. According to the current laws, Deutsche Post will have a monopoly on the market for letters weighing less than 100g until the beginning of 2006; after this, the maximum weight will be reduced to 50g until the monopoly comes to a complete end in 2008. Ver.di says that other countries such as France are not planning to liberalise their postal markets, and that, unless all countries in Europe can harmonise the liberalisation of their markets, the German market should not be opened up.

The German government said it has issued an 8 bln eur bond on its Deutsche Post AG and Deutsche Telekom AG pension obligations. The proceeds from the issue will be used to pay out pensions to former Deutsche Post employees and are expected to ease financial pressure on the German government by about 5.4 bln eur. Joint lead managers for the issue were Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.
German Finance Minister Hans Eichel said in November that the government hopes to raise 5.5 bln eur from the planned sale of some pension fund receivables of former post-office monopoly Deutsche Post’s successor companies.

The state-owned Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) said it has exercised its 15 pct greenshoe option in Deutsche Post AG last night at a price of 18.90 eur per share. It said, including the 16.5 mln greenshoe shares, the shares sold by KfW in the placement that started last Monday totalled 126.5 mln, which is worth about 2.4 bln eur. It said the free float of Deutsche Post is now at 55.3 pct of its basic capital while the KfW’s stake is at 37.4 pct, or 416.3 mln shares.

Deutsche Post AG chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel said he hopes that the German federal government and Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) will have placed their remaining shares in Deutsche Post in the market by the end of 2007, when the company will lose its stamp monopoly. The comments come after KfW said it placed 110 mln shares of Deutsche Post at 18.90 eur each, adding that the value of the placement was 2.079 bln eur, excluding a greenshoe option of up to 15 pct which can be exercised until July 14. Commenting on the placement, Zumwinkel said KfW proved once again that it can carry out the gradual privatisation of the firm ‘in a sensitive … manner’.