Member Info for OliGarch

casperdog, I think that you will find the cleaners and engineers (certainly the newer entrant's) are in a Legal & General pension scheme so it wouldn't be hard to transfer over.

AngerSharkz, the boys and girls in my local delivery office are a very diligent group. I have had the same postie since 2015 and he is hard working and always on the go. If you take a group of 114,000 people from across society there will always be a small percentage of slackers but it's usually the minority that spoil the image for the majority.

T2K, (there's a RM acronym for you Derek).... I think that today's fluctuation is the normal "nothing to report so let the algorithms play" type of swing that we get from time to time as it's only a couple of pennies.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/27/royal-mail-bosses-threaten-to-declare-insolvency-as-pay-talks-near-collapse

Derek, wasn't it TNT that bought a sizable amount of the old RM Pashleys (when RM went over to van deliveries) and painted them orange? Their central London operation was a complete disaster.....lol

AngerSharkz, "Letters are not the future of Royal Mail".
If Royal Mail doesn't deliver letters, then who would be given the burden? I can't think of any courier that would put in a tender for that little number.
Incidentally, my household received eight letters and a jiffy bag this morning and we usually receive at least two letters every day plus the mandatory Domino's flyer.

OFCOM currently have the power to remove Royal Mail as the designated universal service provider (but it probably won't) or even to designate another universal service provider to work alongside Royal Mail.
The Postal Services Act is not a great bedtime read but it seems to have made provisions for the current situation.

T2K, Amazon certainly need RM as do Evri and DPD as they utilise the USO to force RM to deliver their overflow of parcels in times of overload or staff shortages plus RM is very handy for delivering all of their unprofitable "Highlands and Islands" parcels but I'm not sure that they would be interested in buying RM?

Mike, "Just the other day I saw my village postie stood leaning on his van chatting to a customer, 30 minutes later when I came past again he was still there."
It was either Thompson or McAulay who told the select committee that the PVAs weren't used to monitor staff but were used to check on the welfare of their staff. In which case, if that postie had been stationary for half an hour then their yellow dots would have grown considerably and probably necessitated a visit from the local paramedics in case of an emergency?
But hang on......"those details aren't available in real time" said Thompson later on in that session "the details are downloaded and aren't available until the next day".....
One of his stories is false?

T2K, as far as I am aware, GLS are not bound by the USO as they are not universal service providers.
The irony is that the BoD wants the USO reduced for letters from six days a week to five so that it can deliver parcels seven days a week.

The way that I read the relationship between IDS, RM and GLS is that IDS is the holding company for both RM and GLS who both have separate CEOs. The separation was done to protect one company from the other even though historically RM used to be the"parent" company. IDS shareholders have a foot in both camps however with shareholder approval, I do not see why IDS could not apply to have both RM and GLS valued, split the shares between the existing shareholders and then create two separate listings, one in Amsterdam and one in London.
Obviously I don't have the legal background so this is all in my opinion. Any other ideas?

Perhaps spinning GLS off as a separate entity with its own stock market listing before RM drags it down will now become a matter of urgency for Seidenberg?

Rumour has it that the business has called in the auditors and is expecting to post a £400m loss for the UK operation this year.
RM were £92m down by the end of Q1.
The 2% imposed pay increase cost £80m.
Thompson has already claimed that strike action has cost £200m.
There's £372m straight away without factoring in any losses from the cyber attack earlier in 2023 meaning that the rest of the year should have been at least breaking even or have I missed something here?

Having posted the information below, I would also take a guess that, on receiving the news that RM was unable to carry on in it's current format, the Secretary of State would probably offer a temporary bail out whilst a new owner is found as was the case with Northern Rock and Bulb Energy. This would ensure that the mail network keeps flowing.
I would think that the current BoD would be removed and replaced with a BEIS appointed special administrator and team to oversee proceedings.
All in my opinion of course.

Ispy, as IDS comprises of a UK company and an EU company then my guess would be that the two would need to be totally separated in order to stop GLS being dragged down by RM with potentially one company being removed from the IDS group.
The Postal Services Act lays out the provisions for special administration of a universal service provider but as far as I can tell doesn't take into account the fact that there is more than one company in the group.
According to section,3 of the Postal Services Act 2011..
"Universal service providers
35 Designation of universal service providers
(1)OFCOM may designate one or more postal operators as universal service providers.
(2)But there are only two cases in which there may be more than one postal operator designated as a universal service provider.
(3)The first case is where—
(a)OFCOM have made a procurement determination under section 45 (fairness of bearing burden of universal service obligations), and
(b)in the light of that determination, OFCOM consider it appropriate for the number of postal operators designated as universal service providers to be greater than one.
(4)The second case is where—
(a)a postal administration order has been made under Part 4, and
(b)OFCOM consider it appropriate for the number of postal operators designated as universal service providers to be greater than one for, or in connection with, achieving the objective of the postal administration."
So, could there be more than one universal service provider going forward?

Thanks AngerSharkz and Newdealz.

If I am reading the 5pm RNS correctly then BlackRock have increased their holding from 4.1% to 5.0%.
Perhaps they know something?

Mike, VR is still going ahead. My mail centre waves a cheery goodbye to 29 employees today, all on VR terms but they did miss out on the "promised" extra £6k because the paperwork wasn't signed off before January 31st.
The good news is that there are more available parking spaces in the staff car park but the bad news is that we are screwed if we get an unexpected or late mail dump by one of our competitors or an unusually heavy DSA day.

AngerSharkz, "Do you think the ongoing industrial dispute that started almost a year ago might be contributing? And 18 days of industrial action?"
The industrial action has added to the problem but let us not forget that the business was bleeding cash to the tune of £1m per day prior to any strike action and this can only be seen as a failure of management. The financial institutions obviously had wind of this as the SP started it's downward trend from the beginning of January 2022.
It's also worth noting that RM failed to hit their QofS targets for 2021 but had the easy out of covid. The BoD knew that the gravy train wouldn't last forever but failed to take evasive action.

AngerSharkz, I stated the ludicrous but it's the only explanation that I can think of for a delivery company that has become totally unable to achieve its mandatory quality of service targets or delivery on it's mandatory obligations.
The business model has to change however I would use the analogy of a F1 driver constantly exceeding track limits in order to get a faster lap time. RM currently can only achieve it's USO if it changes the parameters.