Tag: Government

France declines comment on La Poste IPO target

Posted by | Jul 7, 2008 | |

The French government declined on Monday 7th July to comment on a report that a possible partial privatisation of La Poste could raise 2 to 3 billion euros (USD 4.7 billion) to help prepare one of the bastions of state ownership for competition.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Chief of Staff lifted a taboo on changing the ownership of the postal service, one of the country’s biggest employers with 280,000 staff, on Sunday by saying the idea of a stock market listing “deserves interest”.
The move would form part of France’s efforts to prepare itself for the liberalisation of the European postal market by 2011.
“We have no comment because La Poste has not put forward a proposal yet,” a finance ministry spokesman said.
“A flotation is one of the options being studied,” a spokeswoman for La Poste said, but said a proposal had not been made formal.
The tentative flotation plan, first reported in Le Monde last week, has angered unions already involved in sporadic strikes to defend pension rights and the 35-hour working week.
The Sud-PTT postal union said it would be “the end of the public postal service” and that a similar step taken by France Telecom had merely saddled it with massive debts.
French daily Echos said on Monday that La Poste, which generated sales of 20.8 billion euros in 2007, was looking to sell 20 percent of its share capital in a possible flotation that would value it at more than 10 billion euros.
Sarkozy’s Chief of Staff Claude Gueant warned on French radio on Sunday of the consequences of failing to respond.
“If we do nothing, very clearly it will be the German post or the Dutch post that will distribute mail in France,” he said.
France’s post office derives 56 percent of its revenues from mail services and 23 percent from its low-fee banking subsidiary La Banque Postale.
Any move towards privatisation would require changing the legal status of the French postal service, a delicate political operation that would involve turning it into a public limited company or “societe anonyme” instead of a civil service branch.
The government says any changes would not threaten La Poste’s public service status.

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IFA urges submissions to save postal network

Posted by | Jul 4, 2008 | |

IFA Countryside Chairman David Wilkinson today urged all rural dwellers to make a submission to the Department of Communications on the opening up to competition of the postal network.
Mr Wilkinson said: “It is vital with the introduction of competition that the pursuit of profits does not undermine the rural postal service. The Universal Service Obligation included in the directive must be defined when being passed into Irish Law. This definition must safeguard a daily service for all parts of the country as well as ensuring prices remain the same throughout the Ireland. Rural dwellers must not be forced to make do with a reduced service and/or higher prices.”

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Improved postal service depends on open market, says ComReg

Posted by | Jun 30, 2008 | |

postal service and the provision of better value will only be achieved if An Post’s dominant position “does not foreclose” on the emergence of a fully competitive market.

The regulator’s chairman, John Doherty, said in a paper on the opening of the postal market to full competition in 2011 the challenge for postal operators is to “open the door and grasp the great opportunities” that exist.

Stating that the legal obligations on postal operators must be precise and unambiguous, he said monitoring and enforcement procedures in the market must ensure compliance on a timely basis by all operators.

Mr Doherty was commenting on the forthcoming transposition into Irish law of EU directives which will facilitate the full opening of competition in the mail market. While commercial users of the postal service can use operators other than An Post, this will in theory open the market.

ComReg wants the new legislation to set out a broad definition of the scope of the universal postal service – ie the service available to all parts of the State at all times. In that context, it said that the designation of a single universal service provider may not be appropriate in a liberalised market.

“The alternatives to designation are ‘market provision’ and ‘public procurement’. The two methods can be used in combination, with public procurement being used to fill in any gaps in market provision,” the paper said. It said licencing will be important to control entry to the market and exit from it and give assurance to users of the integrity of the operators.

“The directive continues the existing requirement that the tariffs for each universal service comply with the principles of ‘affordability’, ‘cost-orientation’, ‘nondiscrimination’ and ‘transparency’. A new requirement is that prices ‘give incentives for an efficient universal service provision’,” the paper said.

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Postcomm: Royal Mail must reduce costs further (UK)

Posted by | Jun 26, 2008 | |

Nigel Stapleton, Chairman of Postcomm the UK postal industry regulator, said that Royal Mail must make greater efforts to become more competitive and not look to Postcomm for a relaxation of price regulation.

In the 2007/2008 annual report, Mr Stapleton said that most people firmly believe that mail can hold its own, despite the rise in email and internet use, but that all mail operators need to raise their game in terms of price competitiveness, service quality and product innovation.

He said that the GBP 100 million loss on the universal service was of great concern as well as the break-even position overall from its addressed letters business. He said Postcomm had relaxed a key feature of the current price control, thereby allowing bigger increases to the prices of certain products where currently prices are below their fully allocated costs. Postcomm was also minded to suspend during 2007/08, the compensation that would otherwise be due from Royal Mail to its customers when quality of service drops below the licence standards. However, he said that Royal Mail needed to be more innovative and reduce costs further to retain customers:

He drew attention to sporadic industrial action in 2007, saying that two thirds of the total working days lost in the UK through strikes were attributable to the series of stoppages at Royal Mail while the company sought to gain support from its workforce for the initiatives required to become more cost competitive.

On an optimistic note, he pointed out that more mail users are now being offered a choice of using either Royal Mail or one of the new entrants to the market.

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Jersey Post faces formal competition

Posted by | Jun 26, 2008 | |

Jersey Post is facing formal competition for the first time after the postal regulator issued a licence to an express delivery service.

The Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority has granted a licence to Regency Holdings Ltd, which delivers business mail and catalogues from the UK to Jersey.

The company has been delivering to Jersey since last year, and the 10-year licence formalises its operations in the Island.

Chuck Webb, executive director of the JCRA, said: ‘Regency Holdings is a fairly small operation that delivers business mail as well as catalogues and associated letters to Jersey from the UK.

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