| Royal Mail chairman wants 20 percent of the company for employees |
|
|
LONDON - Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton has called for 20 percent of the company to be passed on to the employees and has warned against a full-scale privatisation of the company.
"This business is not in a state that it could be privatized. I am not sure that should be the next step," Mr. Leighton told the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee yesterday. He said that Royal Mail had a royal headache since it was muddled with a £4 billion pensions' deficit.
He also referred to the fact that the state-owned postal operator would have to raise more than £2 billion for its modernization drive to get ready for the liberalization o the postal services in January next year. Royal Mail's chief executive, Adam Crozier told the committee that much of the Mail's competition had state-of-the-art equipment while they were being forced to operate on outdated equipment.
"If we are not able to hold or reduce business prices we will lose market share which will put pressure on our ability to perform our universal service obligation. Once you have lost business by and large you never get it back; that's why we are so concerned to get the price control right from day one," he said.
Royal Mail's pensions contributions are set to jump from £400m this year to £800m next year and Mr. Leighton wants these funds to be put up by the government. He has also advocated an increase in the cost of a first-class stamp from 30 pence to 39 pence by 2009-2010, but the regulator Postcomm has poured water over these plans by saying that there can be no increase beyond 4 pence.
Posted
on : Thu, 20 Oct 2005 09:25 GMT | Pensions News
By : Mike Lawson
|
| |
| Related |
|
|
|
