It would be funny to see them try. Not only would the Labour government be sued by every shareholder but if the government could confiscate the assets of any company on a whim then the stock market would collapse taking everyone's jobs and pension with it. But, hey, the socialists would be happy: we'd all be poor together.
I hope you aren't expecting renationalisation of all of those businesses to be in the next Labour manifesto. Even Ed Balls isn't crazy enough to do that as it would be unaffordable. British Gas (in the form of BG Plc) is worth £40bn alone.
Don't forget Centrica, National Grid and the bit Shell bought - Enterprise.
You'll get a free opera singing meerkat with every stamp
which will presumably be delivered to me by any one of 20 courier companies, any of whom will ring my doorbell and wait precisely 6 seconds for a reply before slipping a note through the door saying "sorry you were out when we called. Please pick up your package at our Gatwick depot" even though I live in Manchester.
More reason to buy as big a stake as him and his members can possibly afford then
Why should employees have to buy a company in order to maintain their pay and conditions?
I suppose by your logic we should all club together and buy the NHS to make sure we're all looked after health wise.
which will presumably be delivered to me by any one of 20 courier companies, any of whom will ring my doorbell and wait precisely 6 seconds for a reply before slipping a note through the door saying "sorry you were out when we called. Please pick up your package at our Gatwick depot" even though I live in Manchester.
Who will you trust with a special/recorded delivery item?
Why should employees have to buy a company in order to maintain their pay and conditions?
Why not? It's been proven to work elsewhere. The engineering company my son works at was once a part of a bigger organisation. It broke away, became a business in it's own right following a staff buyout and is doing great guns. Their's is one happy workforce.
I'd love to see the union become the stakeholder and see if they can practice what they preach at Royal Mail. Would be an interesting experiment what with the unions always insisting they know best and supposedly working in everybodies interest so I say sell it to them.
No political interference, no fat cats taking dividends, living standard wages, reinvesting all profits back into the business...all the things they whinge about all nipped in the bud in one foul swoop.
It'll never happen of course because when push comes to shove they'd rather someone else shouldered the burden.
As I understood it the State is the cheapest option for borrowing money rather than the private sector, especially when it is a State owned company.
Robert Peston writing on BBC News website ... "Funnily enough, this should save Royal Mail a fortune - because it is currently paying interest to the BIS department of 8.8% a year, and should be able to pay interest of less than 5% to banks and other private sector lenders.
Last year Royal Mail's interest costs were £82m on drawn borrowings of £973m. So privatisation should save it perhaps £40m of interest payments per annum to the government."
Plenty of investors will buy a loss making business if they see the potential to turn it into a money maker. I suspect RM would be attractive whatever the current profit situation was. Why only put in the effort to reform it just to sell it off, and so risk losing the public service element?
The fact is people wrongly associate state ownership with loss making and it's a shame a profit making state enterprise has to be sold off.
So change the Treasury rules to allow RM to access commercial loans and finance. Why shouldn't RM be a mixed ownership company, allowing stock market investment while maintaining majority state ownership. Not the meaningless "golden share" nonsense used in previous sell offs.
It's not as if RM are short of investment. the problem is the commitment to a national delivery service and that is the real worry about privatisation. Flat rate and guaranteed delivery to areas with low population will disappear when the time period to keep them runs out.
When does the time period run out?
RM will be the USO provider until 2023 when their position will be reviewed. The actual terms of the USO will only change by act of parliament so I don't think there is a specific period.
RM has been starved of investment for years. The current modernisation has been funded by a £1 billion loan via BIS for which RM is paying 8.8% interest. A great deal more investment is required.
All of those utilities were already making a profit before privatisation, the gas in particular has been a disaster for the public with prices outstripping inflation in recent years by 2 and 3 to 1, and in recent opinion polls 2/3 of those polled now want Gas, Electricity, Rail and Water brought back into public ownership, which is where services essential for quality of life should be.
If you think rising gas prices are due to privatisation, how do you account for the fact that ours are amongst the cheapest in Europe?
I'm afraid those who believe we would still have the cheap energy of the 1980s if we had not gone down the privatisation route are living in a fantasy world. If we hadn't, it is quite likely that prices would be even higher now.
Just looking at the prospectus (all 450 pages of it!) released today. I really can't decide whether this is worth a long term investment but it could be a good opportunity to make some short term gains.
Other than in the first few days, i dont see any return to be made on this offer. I don't think they have done enough to divest from their core function into added value services.
If the unions actually had the guts to back up their own bravado they would take a large share.
Goldman and UBS will collect the vast majority of the advisory fees, which could easily top £20m, according to a senior banking source. Banks typically collect up to 4% of the value of a flotation, which would work out at just over £100m if the government floats 90% of the company. But they often charge higher fees for flotations involving sales to the general public, due to the added complexity. The government, aware of the potential public backlash against banks getting rich from the sale of a venerable institution, is understood to have demanded the banks take a much lower cut, possibly as low as 1%.
The Department for Business refused to state the fees paid to any of its advisers, but said it had "negotiated very hard to get the best value for taxpayers". Details of the fees will be published in the sale prospectus in the next couple of weeks. If the fees are set at 1% the banks would collect about £15m if half of the company is floated.
Barclays, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Lazards, Investec, Nomura and the Royal Bank of Canada will also collect fees for working on the deal.
Gert Zonneveld, managing director of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said he was convinced the government's official valuation of Royal Mail at £2.6bn-£3.3bn was a significant undervaluation.
Zonneveld believes Royal Mail is worth £3.7bn-£4.5bn, when compared with listed postal services in other countries. "I'm so convinced they [the government] got it wrong," Zonneveld said. "I think they're more than £1bn too low." Under Zonneveld's valuation, Royal Mail would join the FTSE100 list of Britain's biggest companies, which means tracker funds will be forced to buy the stock
The privitisations of the eighties and nineties were giveaways, so it would be a surprise if the Royal Mail wasn't. Bankers will make a mint from the deal, some already have,
The government's valuation was based on advice from investment banks Goldman Sachs and UBS after £21.7m in fees was paid to advisers
The RM was always going to be sold at a discount. That's how these privatisations work. If the government had gone for a high valuation then that would have risked the offer not being fully subscribed and falling prices when the shares started trading - and the whole thing would have looked like a failure (look at the recent Facebook floatation). By going for a lower valuation, you get everyone piling in with applications, an oversubscribed offer and an expectation that everyone will make some money on day one. Everyone's a winner.
The RM was always going to be sold at a discount. That's how these privatisations work. If the government had gone for a high valuation then that would have risked the offer not being fully subscribed and falling prices when the shares started trading - and the whole thing would have looked like a failure (look at the recent Facebook floatation). By going for a lower valuation, you get everyone piling in with applications, an oversubscribed offer and an expectation that everyone will make some money on day one. Everyone's a winner.
Everyone's a winner, apart from the present owners I.e. Us
Striking aside is the lack of any UK investment banks on the deal. A US and a Swiss investment twosome leading the deal. Is this due to the fact that investment banking in the UK is pretty low down the food chain ( Barclays still have an investment arm although they are part Middle East owned.
Comments
Hey Comrade, that's what I call equality
Don't forget Centrica, National Grid and the bit Shell bought - Enterprise.
More choice just means more confusion.
You'll get a free opera singing meerkat with every stamp
which will presumably be delivered to me by any one of 20 courier companies, any of whom will ring my doorbell and wait precisely 6 seconds for a reply before slipping a note through the door saying "sorry you were out when we called. Please pick up your package at our Gatwick depot" even though I live in Manchester.
Why should employees have to buy a company in order to maintain their pay and conditions?
I suppose by your logic we should all club together and buy the NHS to make sure we're all looked after health wise.
Who will you trust with a special/recorded delivery item?
No idea but when it goes missing I expect I'll have to ring a call centre in Mumbai to find out where it's got to.
Why not? It's been proven to work elsewhere. The engineering company my son works at was once a part of a bigger organisation. It broke away, became a business in it's own right following a staff buyout and is doing great guns. Their's is one happy workforce.
I'd love to see the union become the stakeholder and see if they can practice what they preach at Royal Mail. Would be an interesting experiment what with the unions always insisting they know best and supposedly working in everybodies interest so I say sell it to them.
No political interference, no fat cats taking dividends, living standard wages, reinvesting all profits back into the business...all the things they whinge about all nipped in the bud in one foul swoop.
It'll never happen of course because when push comes to shove they'd rather someone else shouldered the burden.
Robert Peston writing on BBC News website ... "Funnily enough, this should save Royal Mail a fortune - because it is currently paying interest to the BIS department of 8.8% a year, and should be able to pay interest of less than 5% to banks and other private sector lenders.
Last year Royal Mail's interest costs were £82m on drawn borrowings of £973m. So privatisation should save it perhaps £40m of interest payments per annum to the government."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24060864
When does the time period run out?
RM will be the USO provider until 2023 when their position will be reviewed. The actual terms of the USO will only change by act of parliament so I don't think there is a specific period.
RM has been starved of investment for years. The current modernisation has been funded by a £1 billion loan via BIS for which RM is paying 8.8% interest. A great deal more investment is required.
If you think rising gas prices are due to privatisation, how do you account for the fact that ours are amongst the cheapest in Europe?
I'm afraid those who believe we would still have the cheap energy of the 1980s if we had not gone down the privatisation route are living in a fantasy world. If we hadn't, it is quite likely that prices would be even higher now.
If the unions actually had the guts to back up their own bravado they would take a large share.
Some will even get paid for it.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/12/royal-mail-flotation-banks-millions-advisory-role
Goldman and UBS will collect the vast majority of the advisory fees, which could easily top £20m, according to a senior banking source. Banks typically collect up to 4% of the value of a flotation, which would work out at just over £100m if the government floats 90% of the company. But they often charge higher fees for flotations involving sales to the general public, due to the added complexity. The government, aware of the potential public backlash against banks getting rich from the sale of a venerable institution, is understood to have demanded the banks take a much lower cut, possibly as low as 1%.
The Department for Business refused to state the fees paid to any of its advisers, but said it had "negotiated very hard to get the best value for taxpayers". Details of the fees will be published in the sale prospectus in the next couple of weeks. If the fees are set at 1% the banks would collect about £15m if half of the company is floated.
Barclays, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Lazards, Investec, Nomura and the Royal Bank of Canada will also collect fees for working on the deal.
The shares will be available on the open market so help yourself. If you can't beat them, join them.
I cannot beat them personally but i certainly will not be joining them.
Just as i did not for Gas,Electricity,Water,Failtrack shares.;)
Oh dear its Union bashing your into is it.;)
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/04/official-royal-mail-valuation-too-low
Gert Zonneveld, managing director of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said he was convinced the government's official valuation of Royal Mail at £2.6bn-£3.3bn was a significant undervaluation.
Zonneveld believes Royal Mail is worth £3.7bn-£4.5bn, when compared with listed postal services in other countries. "I'm so convinced they [the government] got it wrong," Zonneveld said. "I think they're more than £1bn too low." Under Zonneveld's valuation, Royal Mail would join the FTSE100 list of Britain's biggest companies, which means tracker funds will be forced to buy the stock
The privitisations of the eighties and nineties were giveaways, so it would be a surprise if the Royal Mail wasn't. Bankers will make a mint from the deal, some already have,
The government's valuation was based on advice from investment banks Goldman Sachs and UBS after £21.7m in fees was paid to advisers
Everyone's a winner, apart from the present owners I.e. Us