CVC looks at delivering Royal Mail bid
Private equity group CVC Capital Partners is drawing up plans to buy a stake in Royal Mail.
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Semi-private Royal Mail?
The Postal Regulator is calling for Royal Mail to be partly privatised.
Postcomm is making the highly contentious proposal – which could lead to Royal Mail being owned in part by a private-equity firm – to an independent review on the future of postal services that has been set up by the government.
It says that Royal Mail’s financial difficulties are likely to worsen considerably, without the injection of private-sector capital and management expertise into the state-owned business.
Nigel Stapleton, the chairman of Postcomm, has warned in an interivew with me that in the absence of part-privatisation the government may be required to inject a big new subsidy into Royal Mail, which it won’t wish to do.
The risk of not bringing in the private sector or a subsidy would be a significant deterioration in the quality of Royal Mail’s service under its obligation to deliver letters to and from anywhere in the UK at a uniform tariff, he said.
Only last week Royal Mail announced that it had made a loss on providing this so-called universal service for the first time. Royal Mail estimated that the loss for the last financial year on this its core activity was GBP 100m.
The government will find it hard to dismiss the suggestion out of hand, especially since analysts believe the independent review led by Richard Hooper is expected to come to the same conclusion.
However the Prime Minister is likely to be irked that such a divisive issue is being forced back on to his agenda.
Privatisation in any form, whole or part, is strongly opposed by the CWU, the main postal workers’ union – which is also a leading funder of the Labour Party.
The CWU’s opposition is shared by many Labour MPs.
Read MoreTransforming Belgian Post: the work continues
Johnny Thijs, CEO, De Post-La Poste
Read MorePIN Group attracting interest from CVC Capital
PIN Group, the troubled German mail delivery company that has put itself up for sale, has attracted interest from French, Austrian and Swiss postal services companies as well as from buyout firm CVC Capital, Handelsblatt said, citing unnamed consultants.
The sources said CVC, La Poste of France, Osterreichische Post and Suisse Post have contacted Axel Springer AG, PIN Group’s majority shareholder, the paper reported, adding that an Axel Springer spokeswoman declined to comment.
La Poste of France and Oesterreichische Post said they were not interested in PIN Group, Handelsblatt said.
Read MoreKfW's 41.6 pct stake in Deutsche Post attracts investor interest
German state-owned development bank Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW)’s 41.6 pct stake in Deutsche Post World Net AG has attracted the interest of private equity and hedge funds, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, citing financial sources. UK-based CVC is said to be among the interested parties. It already holds minority stakes in Danish and Belgian postal services, it said. CVC’s head of Germany, Steven Koltes would not comment other than to say that ‘we are very interested in European post companies’. Other companies named ‘in the market’ as interested in the Post-stake, are KKR, Blackstone and Permira, according to the FAZ. However, there are no concrete talks ongoing with KfW.
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