Some investors certainly received a first-class service

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Some Royal Mail investors certainly received a first-class service

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Beyond the row about the valuation of the company, select committee members may this week want to know about cosy chats with certain investors

Thump! That's the sound of yet another delivery of Royal Mail evidence landing on your doormat.

We will be sifting through it all again this week as we get a first look at the company's results, giving us some more information about how it trades – and possibly a clue about who guessed right on the controversial valuation (the advisers at £3.3bn, or the after-market at, er, £5.4bn).

Then, over at the Business, Innovation and Skills select committee, the secretary of state, Vince Cable, and his minister of state, Michael Fallon, must explain themselves, while we also get a cameo from their adviser William Rucker, the boss of Lazard.

How Royal Mail shares boomed after flotation has been well covered, but as well as probing on whether the company was sold on the cheap, the committee may also want to ask their guests why a secret group of pre-selected investors – which excluded many UK pension funds at the expense of foreign sovereign wealth funds – was assembled for cosy meetings prior to the float. The investors in that exclusive club got most of the shares.

That is not abnormal when listing private companies, but Royal Mail was state-owned. When the price soared, and overseas investors profited over British pension pots, even robust observers in City started to get queasy.