Royal Mail shares soar above £5

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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Shares in Royal Mail have risen 50 per cent above the offer valuation a week ago to hit more than £5 as Business Secretary Vince Cable admitted he was told before the float that the price could soar.

The new high was reached as Mr Cable said bankers at Goldman Sachs, UBS and Lazards handling the sale persuaded ministers not to increase the offer price above 330p, fearing it could hit demand.

He said that earlier in the preparation for the sell-off during the summer, the threat of strikes by Royal Mail workers left some potential investors saying they were not willing to buy.

An initial price range of 260p to 330p was set, with the lower end factoring in possible escalating industrial relations problems that might push it down.

Mr Cable has dismissed the flotation fever , which saw the value of the company immediately soar by £1 billion when trading began last Friday, as "froth".

But shares climbed as high as 501.1p in today's session, valuing Royal Mail at £5 billion. The initial offer price of the company's shares at 330p had calculated it at £1.7 billion less.

Last week's surge saw the price climb steeply to 455p by the close, but the continuing rise showed that even at that value investors were keen.

Full trading in the shares, when members of the public who had bought them directly from the Government were able to cash in profits on the rise for the first time, began on Tuesday.

But the price continued to tick upwards as appetite remained unabated.

In a new letter to MP Adrian Bailey, chairman of the Commons Business committee, Mr Cable admitted that revising the price range upward was considered in a late stage of preparations for the sell-off "given the demand generated".

But he said this was not pursued based on assessment of the demand in the order book and where it would begin to taper off, "especially from informed potential long-term investors". Some of these expressed concern about an increase, he said.

Goldman Sachs and UBS, global co-ordinators (Glocos) for the sale, advised against a rise above 330p, citing the risk involved and necessity of having to offer retail investors two days' withdrawal rights.

The view was endorsed by the Government's independent advisers at Lazards, Mr Cable said.

But he added: "The Glocos subsequently advised us to expect a volatile after-market with the risk of a significant (upward) spike in share price."

This was because of the momentum behind the privatisation, widespread predictions of such an increase in the media, shortage of initial supply of the stock, and the delaying of a union strike ballot.

Save Our Royal Mail campaign director Mario Dunn said: "Business Secretary Vince Cable is now claiming that if the Government had priced Royal Mail shares above 330p demand would have dropped.

"This is nonsense. Mr Cable is directly responsible for the taxpayer losing hundreds of millions of pounds. He should do the decent thing and resign."

[vmaxv4]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 89793.html

Shares in Royal Mail have risen 50 per cent above the offer valuation a week ago to hit more than £5 as Business Secretary Vince Cable admitted he was told before the float that the price could soar.

The higher the better!!
Hope when cable goes before Audit Committee he chokes on his own "Froth"..

[pod25]

So when do our dividends start ?
From the day the shares went on the market or when we actually receive them ?

[vmaxv4]

Close of play today..

Share Price: 505.00 Bid: Change: 25.00 (+5.21%)

[TrueBlueTerrier]

So when do our dividends start ?
From the day the shares went on the market or when we actually receive them ?

IIRC dividends don't start or finished - they are just issued at the whim of the PLC.

A dividend is a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it can either re-invest it in the business (called retained earnings), or it can distribute it to shareholders. A corporation may retain a portion of its earnings and pay the remainder as a dividend. Distribution to shareholders can be in cash (usually a deposit into a bank account) or, if the corporation has a dividend reinvestment plan, the amount can be paid by the issue of further shares or share repurchase.

A dividend is allocated as a fixed amount per share, with shareholders receiving a dividend in proportion to their shareholding. For the joint stock company, paying dividends is not an expense; rather, it is the division of after tax profits among shareholders. Retained earnings (profits that have not been distributed as dividends) are shown in the shareholder equity section in the company's balance sheet - the same as its issued share capital. Public companies usually pay dividends on a fixed schedule, but may declare a dividend at any time, sometimes called a special dividend to distinguish it from the fixed schedule dividends. Cooperatives, on the other hand, allocate dividends according to members' activity, so their dividends are often considered to be a pre-tax expense.

The word "dividend" comes from the Latin word "dividendum" ("thing to be divided").

[Shambles]

Like divide and conquer, is that what you mean Teebs?

[RobertT]

So when do our dividends start ?
From the day the shares went on the market or when we actually receive them ?

The first dividend is due in July 2014.

[RobertT]

Close of play today..

Share Price: 505.00 Bid: Change: 25.00 (+5.21%)

The market closed at 4.30 15 minutes after your post at £5.025

[Jynxx]

He said that earlier in the preparation for the sell-off during the summer, the threat of strikes by Royal Mail workers left some potential investors saying they were not willing to buy.

I like how he's trying to blame us for him selling the shares at such a low price. sure we'll get the blame for a lot more over the next few months.

[vmaxv4]

Close of play today..

Share Price: 505.00 Bid: Change: 25.00 (+5.21%)

The market closed at 4.30 15 minutes after your post at £5.025

Unlucky no'13 post
I was chuffin mad at the time.

[nataddick]

Dividend policy per the Prospectus is :-

'The Directors have adopted a dividend policy that supports the Group’s aim of generating value for Shareholders while ensuring that it retains sufficient capital to invest in growing the business. In respect of FYE 2014, in the absence of unforeseen circumstances, the Directors intend to propose a final dividend only, to be paid in July 2014, of £133 million. This amount is approximately two-thirds of the notional full-year dividend of £200 million that the Directors believe they would have proposed if the Company had been listed throughout FYE 2014.'

'Given the seasonality of the Group’s business, the Directors expect to pay an interim dividend each year equal to approximately one third of the prior financial year’s total dividend (in the case of setting the FYE 2015 interim dividend, calculated on the basis of the notional full year dividend described above) and to set the final dividend for each year in the light of the full year outturn; accordingly, the ratio of interim and final dividends may vary over time. It is envisaged that interim dividends will be paid in December or January of the relevant financial year and final dividends in July or August of the following financial year.'

[wandle]

So when do our dividends start ?
From the day the shares went on the market or when we actually receive them ?

We became shareholders as of 15th October 2013, the first full day of trading, and the date on which the "Initial Market Price' was set in stone, for HM Revenue and Customs purposes. Therefore, we are entitled to the first dividend payment, due in July 2014.
IIRC, it will be 14p/share, which means full-timers will get £101.50 (i.e. 725 x 0.14).

[LinChong]

"How Cocaine May Have Caused The Financial Crisis: CNBC
CNBC | By John Carney
Posted: 04/18/2013 1:39 pm EDT | Updated: 04/18/2013 6:57 pm EDT

Was the financial crisis the hangover from a gigantic coke binge?

That's the line of reasoning of David Nutt, a British professor of something called neuropsychopharmacology.

From The Independent:

"The controversial academic, who was sacked for claiming that ecstasy was as safe as horse riding, told The Sunday Times that abuse of cocaine caused the financial meltdown.
"Bankers use cocaine and got us into this terrible mess," he told the paper, adding that the drug made them "overconfident" and led to them taking more risks."

Nutt, who is professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, claimed that cocaine was perfect for a banking "culture of excitement and drive and more and more and more. It is a 'more' drug."

To be honest, when I first saw this story I assumed it was a hoax. The professor's name is "Nutt." His occupation is the nonsensical sounding "neuropsychopharmacologist"—and if you say it loud enough you'll really sound precocious. But I was wrong to turn my nose up at the story—Nutt's a real person and neuropsycho-yadda-yadda is a real thing.

Nutt's at least partly right here. There is a lot of cocaine use in finance. A head of one of Wall Street's top firms used to keep an antacid bottle full of the stuff in his desk drawer. A top trader from Bear Stearns once showed me a cocaine dispenser he had built from a retractable ballpoint pen that had his firm's logo on it. At the TGIF's near Wall Street you could silently pick up cocaine just by leaving a very large tip for the bartender; he'd then slide a napkin covering a baggie of coke across to you. Talk about an over-the-counter trade.

But if you're searching for pharmacological contributors to the crisis, you shouldn't stop at cocaine. Far more prevalent than cocaine were Ritalin and Adderall. Sometimes it seemed as if every single analyst and junior associate at a Wall Street firm was popping little blue attention-deficit pills. And not just popping them. Late at night, you would sometimes see a nose or two tinged blue because the pills had been crushed and snorted.

The virtue of "Ridderall," as one of my friends use to call the two drugs, was that it was perfectly legal. You could have it in your desk in its own bottle. On your desk, even. Everyone had a doctor who would prescribe it. If your doctor hesitated, you just went to another one. It was far cheaper than actual illicit drugs, and you didn't have to worry about what else was in it.

"All the dopamine, none of the dope," a Wall Street friend of mine once said.

Some folks on the Street even believed that ADHD drugs could make you a better trader by regulating your dopamine levels. A scientific study backs it up—kind of.

No doubt a lot of the billion little decisions that contributed to the financial crisis were made under the influence of drugs. But they typically were legally prescribed rather than the stuff Tony passed to you over the bar at TGI-Fridays.

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