Royal Fail

I voiced my anger at the privatisation of Royal Mail last year. The opening share price that was obtained for the company was well below market value and to date, nobody has been made accountable.

 

There have been clear winners from the lower price though. For example……

 

George Osborne’s best man (Peter Davies) heads up a hedge fund which has secured profits in excess of £30 million from the privatisation of Royal Mail in under six months. He sits on the management committee of Lansdowne Partners, which snapped up shares at the offer price of just 330p. They are now trading at around 500p……some 50% higher.

 

The Government has been slammed by the National Audit Office for an under-priced sale which saw City firms walk off with two-thirds of the public asset while 40,000 ordinary individual investors were excluded. If the city and certain ‘friends’ are the winners, then taxpayers are the losers.

 

This is the actual quote from business minister Michael Fallon in April 2014:

 

“I can state categorically that we have no intention of selling off Royal Mail cheaply. We will sell shares in Royal Mail at a fair commercial price that represents value for money for the tax payer.”

Well here’s the thing…….when the share price increases by 50% in the first 6 months, achieving a fair commercial price has not been achieved.

 

The result of all of this is that there could have been more coffers in the public purse. This would either lead to better public services or a reduction in tax.

 

Perhaps more concerning is that to date, nobody has been held responsible for this mess.

 

Another one for taxpayers to take on the chin.