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Of all the takeover battles currently on the table, there is none more important for Britain than the proposed £3.6bn sale of International Distribution Services, the owner of Royal Mail, to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.
The passive way in which the board of directors accepted the deal and the weak commitments made by Kretinsky are shameful.
Chairman Keith Williams and his team should resign and make way for a new slate of directors more capable of managing a vital utility in the interests of all stakeholders, including consumers and civil servants.
The rush to reach an agreement is parallel to the electoral calendar. Under normal circumstances, this is a transaction that would have captured the full attention of the House of Commons Business Committee, with testimony from all the players, including Kretinsky and his chief operating officer, Roman Silha.
The consequences of such hearings, focused on the fate of an institution that served the country for 508 years, would have been enough to end it.
Vital profit: Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s £3.6bn bid for Royal Mail owner International Distribution Services has been approved by the company’s board
The election has paralyzed the functioning of the House of Commons, Whitehall and the regulator Ofcom.
There are no such barriers to a deal with the City that risks slipping under the radar while the government takes care of other things.
Such a sale, with a huge impact on the NHS and HMRC operations, should have caught the attention of the government and the opposition.
Instead, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has offered unconvincing words and hesitations about the UK’s need to attract foreign capital.
Ownership of the Royal Mail should be an open target for a future Labor government, partly funded by the unions.
Labour’s economic team, led by Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds, has behaved like rabbits in headlights, perhaps afraid of upsetting the notion that Keir Starmer’s party is pro-business.
Royal Mail ownership should be a priority issue in a campaign dominated by empty promises.
fashion fandango
A stock market listing with a valuation of £50bn in London would always prove irresistible to the City and British politicians.
Therefore, an IPO for Shein, the Singapore-based fast fashion champion, was always likely to be accepted.
Over the past few years, much of the traffic has gone in the opposite direction, with many executives seeking the get-rich-quick pay scales in the United States.
Justifying high salaries in London is more difficult, as demonstrated by protests over the £8.2m package for Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea.
The questions about Shein are complex. President Donald Tang and founder Chris Xu always considered a float in New York to be in high demand.
Rabidly anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States was a major obstacle. Although Shein is based in Singapore, its engine is in the People’s Republic and suspicions about working conditions run deep.
UK investors cannot be expected to feel any less convinced by all this. Boohoo found itself under intense fire over conditions in its factories.
The collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 shone a harsh light on conditions there and led Primark, among others, to insist on higher construction and factory standards.
Tang has gone to great lengths to court both Government and Labor politicians, including shadow business secretary Reynolds.
There will be an intense look at Shein, known for its cheap and disposable fashion. But the UK pays little attention to the production of other Chinese-made goods, from electric vehicles to laptops. Picking and choosing is hypocritical.
Shein will provide a much-needed boost of confidence to an undervalued stock market.
The music stopped
One couldn’t help but notice the exaggerated death obituaries of musical philanthropist Sir Ian Stoutzker.
He was the first investment banker I interviewed in the heady days of the Barber boom in the 1970s.
He was among a group of executives who ran the investment bank Keyser Ullmann, rescued by the Bank of England when the property bubble burst.
His career was resurrected during a period at another financial group, Dawnay Day, which acquired remnants of Keyser’s operations.
Real estate booms and busts are an enduring feature of free-market capitalism, as the Chinese are learning.