Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser said 49 pct of the Austrian post office, Oesterreichische Post AG, will float on the stock market in autumn. Last year, the head of the post office had said the service might have an IPO in April 2006.
Read MoreA committee met Wednesday for the second time to decide the details of a planning company that will be founded later this month to prepare for privatizing Japan’s postal services. On the agenda are issues that the committee could not conclude at its first meeting in December, such as where the planning company should be headquartered as well as the number of shares and executives it should have. Japan plans to privatize its postal services on Oct. 1, 2007.
Read MoreItalian banks have followed their French counterparts in petitioning the European Commission over the banking operations of their country’s state-owned post office. The ABI, the Italian banking association, wrote recently to Brussels in an effort to spur an inquiry into the possible provision of state subsidies, saying they were unfair to other banks and distort the market.
Poste Italiane’s financial services operations have grown rapidly. Poste now has 4.8m current accounts. That, says the ABI, is up from 400,000 in 1999.
Massimo Sarmi, Poste’s chief executive, told the FT: “The reason for our success is the quality of our service. It is not down to anything else.” The ABI’s complaints highlight the growing concerns of banks about the incursion by postal groups.
In a press release today, 3 January 2006, Posten Norge AS announced that shareholders representing approximately 92.3% of the share capital and voting capital in OptiMail AB at the close of the application period, 30 December 2005, have accepted Posten Norge AS’s public offer to acquire all outstanding shares in OptiMail AB. The bid entails that the shares will be acquired at a price of SEK 18.75 by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Posten Norge AS. Posten Norge AS has further announced that the bid is unconditional.
Read MoreExpress and logistics firm DHL has further expanded the reach of its industry-defining Time Definite Delivery (TDD) to connect the Philippines to nine countries in the Asia-Pacific. With the TDD service in the Asia-Pacific region, sending time-critical and express morning deliveries to Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand is now possible. DHL’s TDD portfolio includes the StartDay Express, which offers the Philippines guaranteed door-to-door delivery by 9 a.m., and the MidDay Express, which offers guaranteed next-day delivery by 12 noon. Customers are able to track the status of their shipments via the DHL website as well as notification from DHL through e-mail and facsimile once deliveries have been made.
Read MoreThe European Commission has decided to pursue infringement procedures against seven Member States for failure to implement in national law one or more of eight different Internal Market Directives.
Read MoreRoyal Mail has launched a direct mail campaign to help businesses across the UK prepare for the introduction of its new pricing system, Pricing in Proportion (PiP). Packs providing information on the new pricing system, as well as advice on how companies can manage the impact of PiP, are being sent to nearly half a million small, medium and large businesses from this week. The mailing follows a series of tailored mail-outs in December 2005 to companies in the marketing, publishing, charity and home shopping sectors who will be most affected by the changes Pricing in Proportion will be introduced on 21 August 2006 and takes into account the size and shape as well as the weight of mail.
Read MorePin Group, the German postal services company, plans to expand significantly its activities and win customers from Deutsche Post, the national postal services provider. Deutsche Post now only holds the monopoly on letters under 50g and will finally lose its monopoly in 2008. Management said that Pin planned to set up many new post boxes across Germany in 2006 and 2007, particularly in busy places such as shopping centers.
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