Royal Mail: Czech billionaire offers to buy all staff shares

Mr Kretinsky’s EP Group has offered a series of time limited guarantees including the retention of the Royal Mail logo, its UK headquarters, and its UK tax base.

It also offered to honour current employment agreements with unions and promised not to split off the profitable parcels business, which IDS also owns.

Nick Pendelton, a former strategy director at Royal Mail at the time of its privatisation, told the BBC’s Today programme: “A lot of people are going to have a decision to make.”

Royal Mail has struggled with the rise of online shopping and the decline of letter deliveries, particularly as consumer habits shifted during the pandemic.

“Things haven’t gone over the last 10 years as Royal Mail, and we all, would have liked,” he said.

“There needs to be time, money, commitment, reform to the Universal Service Obligation to make sure the company is sustainable for another 500 years,” he said, adding that an argument could be made for private ownership.

“But of course, this is not an outcome most people in the UK would be happy with.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said that the deal would be subject to the normal scrutiny but he was not opposed “in principle”.

Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has written to Mr Kretinsky to seek assurances that Royal Mail will remain headquartered and tax-resident in the UK.

Mr Reynolds also wants a commitment from Mr Kretinsky to “work closely with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to build a sustainable Royal Mail”.

The CWU is pushing for “a new ownership and governance model that builds a postal service for the workers and customers”.

Wednesday’s formal offer confirmed that the new owners would consider a new model which involved some employee ownership or profit-share mechanism.