Beleaguered Royal Mail is at the centre of another growing storm – after it emerged the boss of its parent company is trying to get his salary DOUBLED. This is despite the business being an utterly failing one.
Royal Mail: money for nothing
International Distribution Services (IDS) will this month ask shareholders to approve hiking Martin Seidenberg’s maximum award by £300,000.
That could see him take home just over £3million – twice as much as he earned last year – as he oversees the sale of Royal Mail to billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, known as the ‘Czech Sphinx’ for his inscrutability.
Of course, this comes off the back of Seidenberg potentially earning £5m in share sales from the deal with the Czech tycoon. As the Canary previously reported, all this comes on top of the millions that IDS has paid its bosses over recent years – despite Royal Mail’s catastrophic performance. Again, as This Is Money reported:
Five successive chief executives shared £15.2m between the delivery group’s privatisation in 2013 and the end of its latest financial year in March 2024, according to analysis by this newspaper.
In May, Royal Mail accepted a takeover proposal from Czech billionaire Kretinsky worth £3.6bn. It came after Kretinsky’s conglomerate EP Group formalised an improved offer to parent company International Distribution Services (IDS).
“The IDS board believes that the offer from EP is fair and reasonable,” IDS chairman Keith Williams said in a statement posted on the London Stock Exchange.
EP already has a stake of 27.6% in IDS. At the time, it described IDS as “a strong business with solid foundations and the potential to become one of the leading postal logistics groups in Europe”
Raising eyebrows
However, the deal has raised numerous eyebrows – not least with the Labour Party government. As Sky News reported:
the Cabinet Office was reviewing Daniel Kretinsky’s bid to take full control of the company under the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act.
It gives the government the power to assess potential economic and national security concerns.
Government officials could block a deal or ask for specific commitments from the suitor if the review raises major concerns.
Meanwhile, it looks like IDS is trying to keep shareholders somewhat in the dark. It sent them a 140-page document about the deal in June. However, ordinary shareholders have complained that the dossier is too complicated for a lay person to understand.
All this is amid a backdrop of Royal Mail failing as a business and a service.
Royal Mail: not fit for purpose
Royal Mail has been dogged by disastrous mismanagement, willful neglect, and brazen bosses arrogance in recent years. As the Canary has documented it made a £1bn operating loss in the 52 weeks from March 2022 to 26 March 2023.
As we wrote at the time, this level of losses shows bosses’ management of the company was a shambles. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the dispute between the CWU and Royal Mail. The company has lurched from self-induced crisis to self-induced crisis.
From its (now former) CEO Simon Thompson lying to a parliamentary committee, to him and his cronies threatening to declare Royal Mail insolvent if the CWU didn’t bow down to their demands, the past 12 months at the company have been a farce.
Moreover, as anyone who still receives letters will tell you, its service is already dire – thanks to management. However, don’t take customers’ word for it. In November 2023, Ofcom fined Royal Mail £5.6m for missing its first and second class mail delivery targets for the entire financial year of 2022-23.
Yet still, Royal Mail continues to punish staff and customers for its wilful failures. Just days ago, it said it would be hiking the price of first-class stamps again – plus potentially stopping second-class deliveries on Saturdays.
But don’t worry. Bosses are still laughing all the way to the (Czech) bank.
Featured image via the Canary
