Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

The price set for Royal Mail was set according to best advice. IPOs are always a problem. If the price had been higher then the float may not have been fully subscribed. Even Vince Cable was happy with the price. The Royal Mail is not such a wonderful company anyway. Email is killing snail mail.

Hopefully the newspapers will ignore the Royal Charter on press regulation. We need a free press. The price of that freedom is annoying and upsetting a few people now and then.

Funny how this government is always ducking behind something or other.

I could almost imagine Cameron (a horrible thought) at Eton pointing at others in his class saying "teacher it wasn't me it was them".

The job is to big for him.

I would think he spent his time at Eton skulking behind the bins.

It would have been more appropriate if he had got in one.

Cockup after cockup.

30% 30% 30%.

They picked the values.

---------------

Vince hopes the public will have forgotten about the 30%. in three months,

as I posted on the RMG thread .....

fred - though i suspect the price will stay stable, I could easily be wrong and perhaps it will tumble, but only when things settle down can you make any judgment call on whether or not the shares were underpriced.

in any case, surely it was a better call to make the shares "good value" to ensure that the sale went well, than to take a gamble and to have priced them (with hindsight) at say 425 ...... had they been priced that high, it is likely, though a paradox, that the flotation would have been a flop

Hays.

One needs a free government.

Not one which waits at the garden gate, or meets at the hunt to be told what to do by the Muddies and Rebecca's of this world and hopes they can bribe the "Free Press" into supporting them in return.

The relationship between the tories and the gutter press stinks.

fred - would the labour party be a better entity if it wasn't married (ball and chain) to the unions?

Cynic,.


I guess 30% is fine!!!!!! 8-)

---------

It didn't have to be sold.

Management was improving and could have been improved more.

It would have been possible with a sensible approach by both management and workforce to come to a "sensible deal" based on increased short and long term profitability.

I will wait and see. My bet there will be a drop back in price after next week, but when NY settles their budget that it will move up to 500 mark.

Labour had a very pally relationship with Murdoch previously. You seem to have endless left wing fantasies.

OBC,

It did need to be sold. It's a crap business which needs massive investment so it can compete in more lucrative sectors. There's no point in being sentimental about it as, hopefully, the new investment will allow it to modernise and prosper.

And the price, and whether or not it's been flogged off cheaply? No, it hasn't been sold off at a cut-price - the premium just goes to show what a good job the guys running the book have done.

Gotta say that I'm not too keen on having Jimmy Saville's head on the new 1st class stamp though.

:o)

If the business does badly then we are lucky to get rid of it. If it does well and makes a profit then we can tax the profits. If you add the money we have for selling it then its win win.

The problems will start when the beancounters take an axe to the workforce, as they surely must.


What will the price of a stamp rise to?

Will they maintain universal delivery?

What service will go first?

And if you want to compare the sale of the Royal Mail to what the one-eyed Scottish Monster did with the the nation's gold, here are the differences.

Royal Mail

Cameron sought advice.
Cameron listened to the advice,
Cameron acted on the advice.

Gold

Gordon Clown sought advice.
Gordon Clown didn't listen to the advice.
Gordon Clown ignored the advice.

MaxK,

If they go on strike, sack 'em. They're probably all Bozzers anyway.

it doesn't much matter whether or not RM had to be sold; the decision, right or wrong, was taken to do so
for myself, I can't say I was much enamoured with the present (late?) set up, though it's debatable whether or not it will improve under new management

as for the price, i wouldn't have any idea where to start on pricing anything like that - or much else for that matter - and i dare say you are in the same boat ...... therefore to say with infallible hindsight that the price should have been say £4.00 or a little more is pretty disingenuous

that said, i would agree that £3.30 looks strangely low (with hindsight) for something that was studied at length by so-called experts, and that £3.75 would probably have been the right sort of level to ensure success

Perhaps the problem with Royal Mail over the years is that it hasn't had any competition and I always think that good businesses thrive on competition. Added to that now there is so much business conducted over the internet by email etc.. A large part of the mail I get each day is junk mail - some of it addressed to " the householder". Demand for the service is going down and prices are going up.

Cyners,

You don't get it, do you? You price something according to what you think you'll be able to sell it for because somebody else will be happy to buy it at that price.

Barclays and BoA (or whoever it was) thought they'd be able to sell it at between £3.00 and £3.30 a share. They did sell at that price. They were right. It's got fuck all to do with being cheap or expensive. It's about matching perceived buyers with sellers in the market.

They seem to have balls it up.

I did some work on one of the privatisation IPOs in the early 80s. It is an extremely difficult problem. You have to value the assets, the turnover, estimated profit, goodwill, the business potential etc. When you have a figure that involved a huge team of people, you then have to come up with a range of possible prices. The one I worked on was done mainly by a very large firm of accountants using a lot of computing power for modelling various scenarios. The final price was a success as far as uptake, but all the left wing loonies moaned and moaned about it.

So the Nu owners took into account the pension provisions?