My God, the Daily Mail are up in arms.....against privatisat

[pinstripe]

My God, the Daily Mail are up in arms.....against privatisation, well mostly.

They're annoyed they're not getting their grubby mitts on us.

You need to read the comments, but try not to laugh at the indignation.



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City banks and hedge funds are predicted to make a killing from the Royal Mail share frenzy because the company may have been undervalued by more than £1billion.

The Government is selling just over half the company, prompting a shares gold rush but with big investment firms given the right to buy 70 per cent of them thousands of small investors risk losing out.

Small investors have been left scrabbling around for the remaining 30 per cent. The deadline for applications is tomorrow at midnight and the sale is predicted to be hugely oversubscribed, prompting fears there will simply not be enough shares to go around.

They are being sold for no more than £3.30 each, but yesterday analysts claimed that they are likely to soar in value as soon as the firm floats on the stock market – possibly to £4.50.

If that happened, investors would see an immediate paper profit of 36 per cent. The sales frenzy will continue until applications to buy shares close, at midnight tomorrow.

It was partly fuelled by financial pundit David Buik, who tweeted that some hedge funds had applied for hundreds of millions of Royal Mail shares.

‘There’s going to be a scramble for these shares and a lot of people are going to miss out,’ he said. ‘Retail investors risk being skinned alive in the race to get hold of the shares.’

The Royal Mail will be floated on the stock market on Friday. City watchers and the Labour party claim the Government has hugely underestimated interest in the shares – undervaluing the organisation by as much as £1billion.

The official guidance on the share price suggests they will be sold to the public and City institutions at no more than £3.30 each, valuing the company at £3.3billion.

But analysts believe the figure could reach £4.50 on the first day of trading on Friday, so valuing the company at £4.5billion.

If that is correct, the Government, which is selling off around 52 per cent and giving another 10 per cent to staff, could have lost out to the tune of around £500million.

That would embarrass Chancellor George Osborne, who will be accused of selling off the nation’s ‘family silver’ at a knockdown price.

Yesterday Gert Zonneveld, managing director of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said he was convinced the Government’s official valuation of Royal Mail shares was too low, and added: ‘I think this is going to be massively oversubscribed.

‘Institutional investors who want £10million will increase their order to £50million because they know their orders will be scaled back.’

He has argued that the the government 'got it wrong', adding: 'I think they're more than £1billion too low.'

Would-be small investors can buy shares directly via a Government website, or through one of more than 30 intermediary stockbrokers, including Hargreaves Lansdown.

When asked whether shares might be rationed, its head of equities, Richard Hunter, said: ‘It’s certainly possible. We haven’t had a Government privatisation like this for some time.

‘If you go back to the 1980s, and some of the bigger privatisations around then, in the event of any over subscription or last minute applications, there tended to be an allocation policy where everybody would get some shares but not as many as they asked for.’

The Government’s valuation was based on advice from investment banks Goldman Sachs and UBS.
The sale has been overshadowed by opposition from the workforce and the Communications Workers Union which has threatened strike action before Christmas.

And a recent survey showed more than 60 per cent of people were uneasy about the privatisation.

Labour’s business spokesman, Chuka Umunna, said the Government should pull the plug on the sale. He told Sky News: ‘Increasingly what this is looking like, is a massive bonanza for City speculators and a huge short-changing for taxpayers at the same time.

‘If you actually look at the property assets and you look at the value, this doesn’t add up.’

But a spokesman for the Department for Business said: ‘The Government is approaching the sale as a commercial shareholder and is seeking fair value for the shares and the best deal for taxpayers.’

[cloherty1976]

That means if true you could make £3000 on your money if you buy the guaranteed £10000 through Royal Mail.but also remember it could go down as this is only speculation!

[Lounge Lizard]

They probably realise that Hitler never privatised the German mail, so why should we ?

[TrueBlueTerrier]

They probably realise that Hitler never privatised the German mail, so why should we ?

But while he was in Power the Reichspost introduced the worlds first postal code system, in 1942, initially for packets and then letters.

[RobertT]

But while he was in Power the Reichspost introduced the worlds first postal code system, in 1952, initially for packets and then letters.

Hitler committed suicide in 1945!

[TrueBlueTerrier]

But while he was in Power the Reichspost introduced the worlds first postal code system, in 1952, initially for packets and then letters.

Hitler committed suicide in 1945!

typo corrected

[Lounge Lizard]

They probably realise that Hitler never privatised the German mail, so why should we ?

But while he was in Power the Reichspost introduced the worlds first postal code system, in 1942, initially for packets and then letters.

No, Britain was first, in 1857, before Hitler was even born.
To accelerate further the delivery of mail in London, Sir Rowland Hill proposed a solution which involved dividing the capital into 10 separate postal districts. The districts would be denoted by the compass points, and an office established for each district. The original 10 districts - EC (Eastern Central), WC (Western Central), and then NW, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, and W - were contained within a circle of 12 miles' radius from central London. The public were asked to add the districts' initials to the end of an address.
Hill's plan was authorised in 1856 and implemented during 1857 and 1858. The scheme accelerated the circulation of London's mail, particularly local letters which could now be sorted in the local office instead of having to be taken to the Chief Office in the centre of London. In 1866, following a report by Surveyor Anthony Trollope, better known today as a novelist, NE was not considered viable and was merged with E district. Two years later, S was abolished, and divided between SE and SW.
In the 1860s London was followed by other large towns. The initial of the town name was used (M for Manchester, and S for Sheffield for example) followed by a number to indicate the geographical district. Liverpool was the first provincial town to be divided into districts: Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern districts were created in 1864/65. Manchester followed with eight districts in 1867/68, and by the early 1930s, Dublin, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle and Brighton had joined the scheme.
In 1917, during the First World War, the London system was further refined by dividing the districts into sub-districts, still in use today. These were introduced to assist women sorters who had largely taken over sorting work from the men who had gone to war and so did not have the knowledge and experience those men had acquired over the years. The sub-districts were each given a serial number (such as SW6 for Fulham). These formed a suffix to the district's initials and were allocated in sequence. For example the Eastern District Office was E1, Bethnal Green was E2, Bow was E3, and so on.
In 1923, Glasgow became the first provincial city to adopt district numbering as well as district initials (G1, G2, G3, for example). However, the scheme had limited success due to few people using the district numbers.
In 1931, the Postmaster's Surveyors of Leeds, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast and Sheffield were asked to propose schemes for dividing the cities into numbered districts, provided they had support from local authorities. In January 1932, the proposals were approved by the Postmaster General and greater efforts were made to publicise the new districts. This was particularly effective in Glasgow and Leeds where all street signs were replaced with ones bearing the numbers.