Tag: Germany

Deutsche Post AG should receive subsidies from the Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications and Post (RegTP), to help it maintain a mail delivery service in rural areas after 2007, the Financial Times Deutschland cited Deutsche Post chief executive Klaus Zumwinkel as saying. Deutsche Post is legally required to operate at least 12,000 post offices in Germany, and provide all residents with mail delivery services, but after 2007 it will not be required to maintain the network. ‘I can’t imagine that Deutsche Post would abandon complete coverage,’ Zumwinkel told the newspaper.

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.