Moya Greene has sorted profits but can she deliver ----

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Royal Mail's Moya Greene has sorted profits but can she deliver on the stock market too?

http://www.standard.co.uk/business/mark ... 30581.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Canadian chief is eyeing a £3 billion flotation. Ministers are keen but first she must sweet-talk the union bosses into agreeing

It's fast becoming the year of the Canadian. In five weeks’ time, Mark Carney will slide behind his desk in Threadneedle Street as the first overseas Governor of the Bank of England. Over at the Royal Mail, Moya Greene has a three-year start on her countryman, who she expects to hit the ground running.

“He’s someone who knows the UK — he went to school here,” she says. “I think you know that he’s a very capable executive.”

The question is whether Carney will emulate Greene’s shake-up of one great British institution with that of another — or share her love of the capital’s public transport system. “Oh my God, I use the bus a lot,” exclaims the petite, blonde-haired chief executive, who is unafraid to speak her mind. “Where would I be in London without it?”

Greene, 58, might be boarding a double-decker all the way to the stock market after the Royal Mail reported a near-tripling of annual profits to £403 million last year.

Even the doubters of this corporate transformation concede now that today’s ministers could succeed where Lords Mandelson and Heseltine failed in privatising the postal network. From an antiquated firm close to collapse a few years back, it might actually find new shareholders even though margins remain thin. “I don’t want to give anybody investment advice,” says Greene, laughing. “But I have been on record saying I think the best investors for Royal Mail would come through an [initial public offering] where you get a mix of pension funds, mutual funds, our own people and also some retail investors participating.”

Greene says that only “a small portion” of the profits rise has come from price rises, including the hike in the cost of a first-class stamp from 46p to 60p. Most she ascribes to her parcel strategy and productivity improvements. So can the 4% growth in parcel volumes — aided by the online shopping boom — offset the decline in letters, off another 8% last year as email takes over? “That is the question I ask myself almost every month, I think the answer is yes — but we do have to stay on top of our game and invest,” says Greene, a lawyer by training whose teacher mother instructed her to speak clearly. That advice hasn’t prevented her from regularly lurching into management jargon.

The Government sees privatisation as the only way to preserve the six-day-a-week obligation for universal service that means a letter can be sent to the Highlands of Scotland for the same price as crossing London. It might have been easier on the company — and easier to stay in state hands — if that rule hadn’t been enshrined in the Postal Services Act, but no politician would back a vote-losing plan to reduce it. Investment banks will be appointed to handle the sale shortly.

If this week’s numbers suggest Greene has customers on side, now all she has to do is win over her 130,000 workers. She insists the mood has lifted, and more staff buy into her strategy. But the Communication Workers Union has balloted its members on privatisation, the first step towards a summer of industrial action. “I would say that 90% of the things that are important to the success of the company we agree on,” she says. “But they have lost 50,000 members and seen many of their jobs privatised to competitors. I just don’t understand why they think government ownership is such a good thing.” Of course, Greene cut many of those roles herself, in what seems to be a rolling programme of voluntary redundancies.

Energetic and driven, she developed a reputation as a canny operator by straddling the divide of private and public sectors. Greene helped to manage the privatisation of Canada’s railways, airlines and ports before top jobs at three of the country’s largest companies.

It was while working at manufacturer Bombardier — where she commuted regularly to Berlin to fix a troubled train-making arm — when she decided she wanted to lead.

Her chance came at Canada Post, which serves half the number of households as Britain, but scattered across an area larger than Europe.

The challenges were similar but the end game was never to privatise. From succeeding there, Greene caught the eye of Royal Mail chairman Donald Brydon who was hunting for a replacement for Adam Crozier after he quit for ITV. “The attraction for me was it is an iconic company. This is the company that taught the whole world how to do this business. Of course it is larger, but it was in a very perilous condition.”

Indeed it was. Postal liberalisation allowed new entrants to cherry-pick the market they operated in so that the Royal Mail even lost money when its postmen carried rivals’ post in the last mile of the delivery network. Prices were capped and new services made tricky to introduce. “We were really suffering under a regulatory approach that was probably the worst of any country subject to the European Union directive. There was no way for the company ever to be successful if we couldn’t change that. Now we’ve got the commercial freedom that was needed to begin to climb out of a very deep hole.”

Businesses gripe that their costs have been driven up. The taxpayer has also contributed heavily as the Royal Mail’s £10 billion pension deficit has been transferred to the state, at a cost of £1.3 billion in the first year alone. In addition, the Post Office network has been hived off. There has also been spending on new trolleys, vans and handheld consoles to record delivery times.

However well the Royal Mail might be doing now, Greene — whose pay is expected to have risen from last year’s £1.1 million package — warns it must keep up the pace, including investing more. She points back at her old job as an object lesson in why it’s essential not to take your foot off the gas. “If you want to see how fast things can fall apart in this business, look at Canada Post today. After I left they had a national strike and lost a lot of their business.”

The constant challenge means that even Greene’s leisure comes in snatches. She winds down with a glass of white wine and often skips over the works of Robert Frost and Ted Hughes. “I’ve got a lot of stuff I have to read for my job and so four or five years ago I found that my pleasure reading was dropping off. I picked up poetry for the simple reason that if you’ve got a 15-minute window you can get through a poem but you can’t get through a novel.”

In preparation for his new job, Carney could do worse than pay attention to how Greene has begun to deliver.

LIFE AND TIMES

CV MILESTONES

1979 Public Service of Canada immigration adjudicator, leading to several roles in Canadian ministries

1991 Transport Canada assistant deputy minister

1996 TD Securities managing director, infrastructure finance

2000 Canada Imperial Bank of Commerce senior vice-president and chief administration officer

2003 Bombardier senior vice-president operational effectiveness

2005 Canada Post president and chief executive

2010 Royal Mail chief executive

PERSONAL LIFE

Divorced with a grown-up daughter. Relaxes by reading poetry and weekend walks, which have recently included such picturesque destinations as the Lake District fells and the Trossachs.

BEST ADVICE I'VE RECEIVED

My mother would tell me: “You can be the top of the hit parade one day and on the hit list the next. Never let anything go to your head.”

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Not the most flattering picture - badly photoshopped.

moya.png

[houseoflords]

Where's the Queen's head gone, oh we wont need it when were privatised, sorry! Doh.

[mandelsons_toenail]

Aa other 8% mail decline?

Comedy isn't it, every year it's down, down, down

Absolute bullshit :dcfo :dcfo

[UnhappyGremlin]

Year on year for nearly a decade, RM have said mail volumes are down by between 5 to 9%. If true, we would be delivering less than a 3rd of the mail we were 10 years ago. We clearly aren't.
As for people coming round to her way of thinking with regards to privatisation, if you fill the roadshows/meetings or whatever with sycophantic bosses instead of posties, it is hardly surprising she gets this feeling. Volunteers were asked for in my office, there were plenty, including me, but only bosses went, and acting bosses at that, who for one day were back in uniform.....if I was cynical, I'd be suspicious.