Tag: Royal Mail Group

Troubled postal service Royal Mail expects to name its new chief executive before Christmas. The state-owned organisation revealed the news as it stayed tight-lipped over a report that the managing director of Atherstone-based parcel carrier TNT, Alan Jones, was on a shortlist to become its new chief executive.

Royal Mail said its chairman Allan Leighton had targeted four potential candidates for the job, but declined to say who they were. A spokeswoman said: ‘Mr Leighton has said publicly that he has about four people on a shortlist, but we don’t know any more than that.’

Royal Mail, the troubled postal services group, yesterday gave warning that the price of stamps could rise by up to 17 per cent if a campaign to end its VAT-exempt status on business services is successful.

Charging VAT on Royal Mail’s business services would be another blow to Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail, who is struggling to reduce the organisation’s huge losses.

A spokesman said: “The last thing we want is to put up our [business service] prices by 17 per cent. That would affect everything from business services to the price of stamps because we can’t differentiate between many services we handle.”

Post Office Ltd, the Achilles’ heel of Royal Mail Group, could become the “EasyJet of banking” within a few years, according to Allan Leighton.

The chairman of Royal Mail said its subsidiary, which last half-year ran up losses of GBP95m before exceptionals, could one day return to profitability by providing cheap and simple banking services to millions.

“With 3m to 5m card accounts we could break even,” Mr Leighton said. “If you then add on banking services, we can make it very profitable and become the EasyJet of banking.”

The changeover to paying state benefits direct into bank accounts from next April could result in chaos because not enough has been done to train postmasters or educate benefit claimants, MPs were warned yesterday.

Post Office executives told the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee that there was a muddle over which government department should take the lead and that preparations for the changeover were behind schedule.

The phasing out of giro books and the move to pay benefits through automatic credit transfer direct into bank accounts threatens to rob the Royal Mail of pounds 400m worth of business.