Tag Archives: Comment

Shops take on temporary workers to cope with the rush, delivery companies are working overtime, Royal Mail finally has something other than junk to put through the letterbox (more than 1bn Christmas cards are bought into the UK every year), pantos are booked out at the theatre, and the restaurants …

Equity markets are attempting to stabilise after the tech-led sell-off at the end of last week, but the lack of direction from the US on Monday means we are waiting on the Wall Street cash equity open to get a true feel for sentiment. European bourses traded a little lower …

When Royal Mail (RMG) was privatised in October 2013 many suggested it was being sold off too cheap. Given that the hugely oversubscribed IPO price was at 330p and the stock opened up at 450p, that seemed a fair criticism at the time, especially give the healthy profits for those …

ALEX BRUMMER: Europe’s feeble bail-out will not be enough to head off large scale unemployment By Alex Brummer for the Daily Mail Published: 22:42, 21 July 2020 | Updated: 23:14, 21 July 2020 The longest summit in the European Union’s history finally has delivered a result. The £680billion Covid-19 rescue package …

Equities enjoyed a good second quarter, with the FTSE 350 rising 20 per cent. You’d expect, therefore, that high beta stocks (those most sensitive to moves in the aggregate market) would have done well. And they have. My portfolio of them rose 41.2 per cent in the quarter, thanks in …

ALEX BRUMMER: Chancellor Rishi Sunak will have to make the most of limited fiscal capacity if a jobs catastrophe is to be averted  There are 9m employees on furlough  The formal data we have so far on the Covid-19 shows a peak to trough fall of a whopping 25 per …

Perhaps that explains why management struggled to face up to the severity of the crisis. An emergency rights issue came too late and secondary sites were sold off in dribs and drabs, when there should have been a giant “for sale” sign over every asset it owned Sure, the covenant …

The folk at Royal Mail must wince whenever Rico Back makes a delivery. There’s only ever bad news in the chief executive’s postbag. The latest warning is that a three-year turnaround plan is in danger of being blown off course. What’s more, the UK arm of the business is expected to …

It seemed like a good idea. Up until now, the Government had produced three special 50p pieces – in 1973, 1992 and 1998 – marking key stages in Britain’s membership. So why not a fourth to commemorate its exit? I called Craig Mackinlay, a Eurosceptic Conservative backbencher, and asked him …

As the increasing dominance of passive investing demonstrates, share tipping is a mostly a mug’s game. Just ask the former Labour MP Adrian Bailey, who as chairman of the business select committee in 2014 published a scathing report on the privatisation of Royal Mail. According to Bailey and his colleagues, …