The cost of restructuring Consignia, the renamed Post Office, has doubled from earlier predictions of Pounds 400m to at least Pounds 800m. This means the company’s total losses for the year are likely to top Pounds 1.1bn when they are announced next week, despite better-than- expected operating losses thought to be Pounds 200m-Pounds 300m.
Read MoreTHE loss of 30,000 jobs at Consignia will cost the post-office group up to Pounds 700m. When completed, it will be one of the biggest voluntary-redundancy pay outs in British corporate history.
Allan Leighton, Consignia’s chairman, is to report full-year figures on Thursday and will say that an extra 17,000 jobs are to go, in addition to the 13,000 cuts announced already.
Consignia will also announce the biggest loss in the history of the postal service – almost Pounds 1.2 billion. More than Pounds 700m of this will be from exceptional items to cover the huge restructuring programme.
Governments should be allowed to maintain control of privatised transport companies through “golden shares”, Europe’s transport and energy commissioner has suggested. The intervention by Loyola de Palacio comes despite a case being pursued by the Commission against the UK government for its controls in BAA, the British airports authority.
Read MoreThe Direct Marketing Association and leading agencies have attacked Royal Mail for proposed changes to the pricing system for business mail postal rates. Royal Mail is currently in a consultation period over the proposed changes that would see new charges being based on the size of mailings rather than weight.
Read MoreThe States-owned service posted a £4.2m surplus last year, increasing its turnover by 6.6 per cent to £23.5m. Having delivered 74.9 million items of mail a 7.2 per cent increase on 2000 Jersey Post increased its contribution to the States coffers by 4.2 per cent to £2.1m.
‘2001 was a year of many achievements, including improving services, introducing new technologies, increasing our surplus and making further progress towards incorporation,’ said Jersey Post’s chief executive, John Pinel. ‘Over the next few years we will continue to build on these achievements and use them as a platform on which to improve the distribution and communication solutions that we offer.’
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