Some 5,000 of Germany’s 13,000 post offices shut down temporarily Wednesday due to strikes against plans to close hundreds of branches, the Verdi public services union said.
Deutsche Post, the German postal service, has not ruled out shuttering 1,000 branch offices as part of a major bid to cut costs, which according to the Westfalen Blatt newspaper would put at least 3,600 postal workers on the street.
Read MoreThe postal regulator has hit back at accusations from Royal Mail that the new terms and conditions for liberalisation, revealed this week, will give foreign competitors an unfair advantage.
A Postcomm spokesman says: “Royal Mail is being disingenuous here – it uses its domestic profits to finance a successful operation in Holland. Condition 12 of the standard licence states that we can identify when an operator is cross subsidising UK operations using domestic products. In the year of set-up we would expect this to be the case but after that we would refer such activity to the competition authorities.”
Read MoreIn its issue of 19 November 2002 Handelsblatt reported that according to information from Brussels Deutsche Post would have to repay state aid to the Federal Government in the amount of just over EUR 900 million, instead of the just under EUR 850 million initially planned. Deutsche Post has received a payment request for EUR 906 million (including interest) from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance. The company intends to take legal action against this administrative act as it is of the opinion that the amount of interest applied has not been calculated correctly.
Read MoreThe German federal government is planning to raise six billion euros ($6.07 billion) through privatisations in 2003, government sources said on Tuesday. The sources said the government planned to raise 5.5 billion euros by selling stakes in Deutsche Telekom AG or Deutsche Post AG or both. The stakes would probably be sold to state-owned bank Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW), they said. That would imply no immediate increase in the numbers of shares freely available for investors.
Read MoreAs of 1 January 2003, Deutsche Post is to take over the relocation and address registration service, ich-zieh-um.de GmbH. The firm’s current majority shareholder, RWE Com GmbH & Co OHG, is selling all the shares it acquired in August 2001 to Deutsche Post, following the reorganisation of its investment structure. ich-zieh-um.de’s service will make it easier for customers to register their new address and provides tips and advice on moving home.
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