First-class betrayal: Meet the board members delivering 508-year-old Royal Mail into foreign hands

[TrueBlueTerrier]

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mar ... hands.html

Daniel Kretinsky stunned the City when he revealed plans to take over the owner of Royal Mail.

And it was an even bigger surprise to many when the board of International Distribution Services (IDS), the delivery business’s parent company, unanimously backed the Czech billionaire’s £3.6billion offer.

Royal Mail’s privatisation back in 2013 had been controversial enough. But the decision by IDS’s directors means the 508-year-old postal service, set up by Henry VIII, could fall into foreign hands for the first time in its history.

Chairman Keith Williams said the board were ‘acutely aware of their responsibilities, particularly to the unique heritage of Royal Mail’.

But they have faced a backlash from unions and politicians.

The directors are set to pocket a total of £677,621 from the sale. Williams is in line for £210,160 and Martin Seidenberg, IDS’s German chief executive, will receive £264,316, according the formal takeover offer document.

The Government and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have sought guarantees about the future of the postal service and its workforce.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward has said the sale to a foreign owner ‘doesn’t feel right’ as ‘nothing gets more British than Royal Mail’.

Kretinsky has already made several promises, including keeping the Royal Mail name and brand, and retaining its UK headquarters and tax residency to keep it tied to Britain.

But Labour last week vowed to ‘robustly scrutinise’ the deal and give postal workers a ‘stronger voice’ in a pre-election pledge.

Shareholders will vote on the deal at IDS’s next annual general meeting in September.

And the directors – custodians of an historic British institution – will urge them to allow it fall into foreign hands.

These are the board members who have agreed to the sale.

Keith Williams
Chairman

The former British Airways boss has chaired IDS since 2019 and has been on the board for six years in total.

Williams was hired by Royal Mail with a track record of dealing with industrial disputes that it was hoped would help settle the seemingly intractable conflict with unions at the postal services.

As a boss at British Airways he had helped diffuse a long-running row between the airline and cabin crews in 2011.

Martin Seidenberg
Chief executive

The German businessman was tasked with a big turnaround job when he took the reins at IDS last year.

He had previously run GLS –the European parcel service also owned by IDS – since 2020 and before that spent 15 years at courier giant DHL Group.

He joined IDS with a mandate to turn the firm’s fortunes around, which has included lobbying Ofcom and the Government to reform the Universal Service Obligation, which includes delivering letters from Monday to Saturday and parcels from Monday to Friday.

Plans on the table would reduce the Royal Mail’s second class service to every other day.

Michael Snape
Chief financial officer

Snape was appointed as IDS’ group chief financial officer in January.

He was finance chief at Boots for five years. He has also held senior roles at Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.

Baroness Hogg
Senior independent Non-executive director

Baroness Hogg became the first woman to lead the board of a FTSE 100 company when she was appointed chairman of venture capital group 3i in 2002.

She stepped down in 2010 to become chairman of the Financial Reporting Council, the accounting regulator.

A veteran of company boards, she was awarded The Sunday Times’ lifetime achievement award for non-executive directors in 2017.

She has also had a career in government, having been the lead independent non-executive director at the Treasury and head of the Prime Minister’s policy unit under John Major.

Maria da Cunha
Non-executive director

The trained solicitor joined the IDS board in 2019 after an 18-year career at British Airways, where she was director of people and head of legal and government and industry affairs.

Previously she sat on the board of De La Rue, the company that prints banknotes for the Bank of England.

Alongside her role at IDS, she is on the panel of the Competition and Markets Authority, the watchdog, and is a director at housing association L&Q and law firm Irwin Mitchell.

Michael Findlay
Non-executive director

Findlay is the chairman of London Stock Exchange and of construction group Morgan Sindall.

He had a 27-year career in investment banking including stints at Robert Fleming & Co, UBS and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Lynne Peacock
Non-executive director

Peacock is a senior independent director of outsourcing Serco and deputy chairman of insurer Royal London Group.

Previously she was the chief executive of National Australia Bank Europe and led building society The Woolwich. She has sat on the boards of Standard Life Aberdeen, Scottish Water, Nationwide and TSB.

Shashi Verma
Non-executive director

Verma is the director of strategy and chief technology officer at Transport for London.


He is responsible for the operation of London’s transport revenue collection system and implemented contactless payments across TfL’s network.

Jourik Hooghe
Non-executive director

Hooghe is chief financial officer of aviation services firm Swissport International.

He has been executive vice president and finance chief at budget airline Wizz Air.

Prior to that Hooghe spent 18 years working at consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble including a time as head of global strategy.

Ingrid Ebner
Non-executive director

Ebner has a background in logistics, having spent 21 years at Amazon, including as director of supply chain operations in continental Europe.

She is a vice president at shipping giant Maersk’s e-commerce logistics arm.

Mark Amsden
Group general counsel and company secretary

Amsden was general counsel and company secretary at Morrisons, and interim company secretary at Yorkshire Water.

He was formerly a partner at law firm Addleshaw Goddard.

[qwerty2]

What do these idiots do all day?

[Barnacle]

The idea of selling RM to someone who will likely split the company up and make what is left unrecognisable as a mail service, is really unpopular. Who knew?

[rubberbond]

What do these idiots do all day?

Think of ways to screw the rest of us over.

[wdo1256]

What do these idiots do all day?

They have ruined RM , I've copied a previous post below, It really is time for them to go !!

Listed below are 20 mistakes made by those in charge of the business, making critical decision that have affected our future and wasted millions of pounds in the process

1/ Since being privatised in 2013. This board has made mistake after mistake and we are currently 1.7 billion in debt.

2/ Paid off Moya Greene £2.6 Million and appointing Rico Black with a £5.8 Million Hello, spending £1 million to get rid of him, as he spent most of his time working from home, the only problem was his home was Switzerland. Also spent over 5 months on full pay while on gardening leave

3/ Simon Thompsom did all the dirty work then was sacrificed him with a good payout to appease the CWU. He was also given 5 months full pay while on gardening leave

4/ They have ensured that generous terms and conditions remain for the people at the top, while mine and yours have been eroded and decimated.

5/ Instead of being reasonable and working with the CWU, they were stubborn in not giving an inch and systematic in their attitude to smash the CWU, leading to a bitter two-year dispute. When a compromised would have been better for the business and staff.

6/ In the space of a year from April 2023 -24 increased the price of a 1st Class Stamped Letter from 95p to £1.35. This is over a 40% increase to the public.

7/ Ofcom fined Royal Mail £1.5 million for 2018-19 £5.6 million in 2022 -23 for Q of S failure.

8/ Ofcom fined Royal Mail £50 million for breaking competition law. The board in their wisdom appealed, first to the Competition Appeal Tribunal, got refused, then went to the Court of Appeal, got refused, went to the Supreme court who upheld the fine. leaving Royal Mail to pay £50 million, Instead of £50 million there was millions of extra payments added due to the interest payments and legal cost of both Ofcom and Royal Mail. This attitude again of the board never being wrong and refusing to listen has led to wasting millions of extra pounds.

9/ Ofcom celebrated 20 years below and below is their biggest achievement. It is a bad reflection for a FT250 Company to be fined again and again by the regulator . Ofcom will be looking into the Q of S for 2023 – 2024,

“To celebrate A huge amount has happened over our 20-year history, so we thought we’d round up some of the highlights and notable developments.”
“The biggest fine we’ve implemented in our 20 years was in 2018, when we issued Royal Mail with a £50m financial penalty for breaking competition law. When we issue a fine like this, the money is paid to HM Treasury.”

]10/ Whistl is seeking up to £600mn in damages from IDS for anti-competitive behaviour.

11/ During Covid we were classed as key workers and carried on working, Royal Mail made a vast amount of profit, instead of investing the surplus cash into the company, the board gave an interim dividend of 6.7p per share plus a special dividend of 20p per share on top off them, putting themselves 1st again as they have a large amount of shares.

12/ Royal Mail have been recalled to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee in order to clarify or correct the information given by Simon Thompson on Jan 17th 2023. Once again the attitude of Thompson and the board after their versions of events was contradicted by over 1000 e-mails sent to the committee. This led to the embarrassment of being recalled by the committee and asked to take an oath as they were considered to have previously lied.

13/During this session Thompson, Keith Williams and Ricky McAulay, blamed a few rogue managers for prioritising packets and using PDA Outdoor Actuals to discipline staff. It didn’t dawn on the three wise men that this is happening in every Delivery Office in the country.

14/When they were questioned about the continued failure of Q of S they resorted to their usual approach, blame everyone else, it was down to Industrial Action. Yet everyone knows that before and during Industrial Action letters were left behind for the lucrative tracked items.

15/ During this period of Industrial Action Royal Mail suffered a cyber-attack which lasted over 6 weeks and cost over £10 million to recover. Is it a coincidence that during this period non front-line staff were encouraged to deliver parcels to break the strike, the question that must be asked how many people from IT security were missing from their duty and delivering parcels instead?

16/ There has been bad press regarding counterfeit stamps that has dragged on for months, again facing to react as Royal Mail is never wrong left to bad PR and a problem dragging on for months.
Also charging £5 surcharge on a stamp while a packet is £7 is excessive, when a stamp is £1.35 while a small packet is £4.59. This may be problematic in the future.

17/ Daniel Kretinsky came in with an offer of £3.20 per share and the board called it “Opportunistic” yet a week later they accepted it an offer of £3.60 per share plus 10p in dividends. How can someone offering 12% more in cash magically be an acceptable deal?

18/ What was said to the board during that week, it makes you wonder what promises were made to the board to make them change their minds so quickly, do you trust them?

19/ This great deal is for £3.7 Billion, broken down it is £1.2 Billion cash up front and £2.3 Billion in borrowed funds. If this bid is successful Royal Mail will owe £4 Billion. Will Royal Mail be forced to sell assets to service this debt and what would be the debt each year.

20/ If this is such a good deal why have none off the other major shareholders listed below given it their approval, because it is rubbish and they put their shareholders interest first, it’s only the Royal Mail board who think that this is a good deal.

[wdo1256]

Reason 21 to get rid of this board

This proposal is going to cost us £56.9 million in expenses

Win win for the board, they get money from the buyout, and if it is unsuccessful it hasn't cost them a penny as all the payments comes out of the business.

[richietns]

Reason 21 to get rid of this board

This proposal is going to cost us £56.9 million in expenses

Win win for the board, they get money from the buyout, and if it is unsuccessful it hasn't cost them a penny as all the payments comes out of the business.

In a nutshell its privatisation its designed to suck money out and put the bare minimum in,look at when they sold it Cameron and his buddy's had ties to lazard the investment company who gave them the advice and they all made a fortune.