Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24488144

Probably it seems. Obviously you want it to go up slightly or stay the same but you don't want it to jump by almost a third.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

The opening price is pretty meaningless. What's more indicative of the 'true value' is what level the price stabilises at in coming months.

I dare say all the RM staff who got shares will be delighted anyway and now they'll have more of an incentive to make 'their' business a success.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

I wish i had bought shares but i never knew about it.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

You ain't missed much mate, I tried for five grands worth and got 749 pounds worth, the maximum any one was allowed incidentally, I don't think it should've been sold of and just like everything else privatised it's been given away :(

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

They could have made £2.7billion if they'd sold at a higher price.

---------- Post added at 22:09 ---------- Previous post was at 22:07 ----------

I bet the posties will be selling theirs next week when their share certificates come through. Correction, they've got to wait 3 years before they can cash them in, 5 years if they want to avoid tax.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Whats happened to the pension debt RM has.. had?

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

We the tax payer have taken that on

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17423461

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

so RM now has standing debt of 1.4bn

news.sky.com/story/1140451/royal-mail-secures-1-4bn-debt-deal

hmm.. i reckon some people are getting carried away with their top level pricetag. somewhere inthe middle could have been achieved.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

The inital price will have been based on worth of business. After that the share price will be affected by people treating the shares as a easy way of making money and not a longer term investment. X will buy shares based on what the buyer Y thinks buyer Z will pay for them. This increase the share price. Same thing happens with house prices. People buy a house expecting to make an easy profit in a years time from somebody else who will in turn hope to make an easy profit in another years time.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

You need to wait at least 3 months before you get the beginning of a meaningful answer to that.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Didn't the Government give up most of it's share in the initial offering? EDIT: No, turns out they didn't. So hopefully the price isn't a fluke and is the worth of the business.
---------- Post added at 23:45 ---------- Previous post was at 23:41 ----------

The share price reflects what the market thinks the company is worth.

When you're doing an IPO you don't want to price it too high so that the offering is undersubscribed but you also don't want to leave money on the table. The share price changing too much from it's initial pricing is not what you want, at least not if you're the one selling those shares.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

70% of the shares weren't available to plebs like us, they we're reserved for the high rollers like pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. The government kept 37.7 percent in tax payer hands iirc

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

"High rollers like pension funds" that pay the pensions of ordinary retired people.......

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Yeah, we wouldn't want our pension funds to make money would we. That way we can all retire on a healthy diet of fresh air and blame those evil Tories for that too... :rolleyes:

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Anyone who's ever owned share knows they go up and down for all sorts of reasons and the opening price is rarely an indicator of anything other than demand chasing limited supply. When the demand slows the price will fall and that will have much less to do with the 'value' of the company or its assets.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Yes ordinary retired Australians in the water companies case, that leveraged debt upon said water company, didn't pay any tax, didn't do much re infrastructure and put the bills up by a third. Sound like.people you'd want to do business with?

---------- Post added at 14:57 ---------- Previous post was at 14:55 ----------

It's not our pension funds that own them but carry on

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24488144

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Course they are Vince just like the water and power companies

http://news.sky.com/story/1152622/ro...-to-get-shares

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

George done his friends another favourr probably but what the hey no one cares so onto the next thing. I'm getting less and less interested in politics by the day and can see the next general election being the first in my adult life where i won't bother voting.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

If George was doing his friends a favour he'd have favoured larger share applications.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

He did that's why 70% of the shares weren't available to the public.

http://news.sky.com/story/1151131/ro...mall-investors

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

from TD's previous link on this page...

http://news.sky.com/story/1152622/ro...-to-get-shares
Seems not to be helping his 'friends'[/quote]

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

[/QUOTE]

Hugh he's helping his very best friends

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...il-shares.html

and the very last couple of lines were telling to, british funds lost out to sovereign wealth funds from abroad, fantastic, what were you saying again Vince?

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Helping his mates, selling it too cheap, blah, blah, blah. Whatever he'd have done some people would be whining. The price these shares are currently trading at has nothing to do with the fundamentals of the business and the fact that major pensions funds and investment companies have bought into the issue is a very good thing for the business and millions of ordinary pension holders and savers whose funds/returns have been having a pretty hard time in recent years. Don't let that spoil the anti-Govt. agenda though eh...

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

I think the best thing for ordinary people and businesses will be how the Royal Mail performs post-privatisation. If it's sold off cheaper than it perhaps should have been then that's not great, regardless of how it helps investment funds, but it's not the worst thing in the world. However the Government will be judged long term on the effects of privatisation.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

In the Times today, it said that most of the trading was in small amounts (personal buyers).

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

It doesn't matter what the share price will be in 3 months time, it's what they could have been sold for when they were issued. It's glaringly obvious that they were sold off too cheaply. However, It's easy to say that the price was set to help Tory 'friends', but it's more likely that the price was set low to ensure that they sold, because after all, politicians' reputations are far more important than little things like getting value for money.

As with previous privatisations, the shares will eventually end up with the big institutional investors. As with previous privatisations, we will find ourselves with a cartel of price-fixing companies.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Now where have we seen that before??

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Perhaps it was here or here.....

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

With the buy limit in place on these shares spread bets can be a very lucrative path to tread. You can make a ton of cash if you're smart.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

What are you saying, two wrongs make a right, big on links short on opinion, mine is politicians are pretty much all ****.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

No, I wasn't saying that, because they don't.

I was pointing out the most recent examples I remembered, which is where he may have seen it before - sorry if I am strong on fact based discussion, rather than polemic and diatribe.

I don't think that all politicians are ****, just like I don't think all claimants are scroungers, or that all teenagers are chavs, or that all unemployed are lazy, or all Tories are Eton-educated Hooray Henries, or all Labour voters live in terraced houses, have flat caps, and keep whippets - some may, but that doesn't mean all fit those lazy stereotypes.

We shouldn't let those outliers lead us to think that some = all....

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Well said. The alternate route is what is happening in America where the sides have so successfully convinced themselves the other side is evil that they seem unable to reconcile on the most basic of policies.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Strong on facts when it suits you, part of the reason for UKIP's rise is the total disillusionment of a large portion of the population to politicians and their ways, they tut at the pathetically low voter turnout almost without realising they are the reason for turning people of and for the record I never said all, just most.

---------- Post added at 04:28 ---------- Previous post was at 04:26 ----------

I don't think they're evil and I doubt anyone sane does, I just think in a lot of.cases the only people they're serving is themselves and to be honest I'm sick of it and I'm sure I speak for a lot of people that feel the same.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

there was scope to get monies between the sale price and the top rate.

How many MPs have bought more than £750 worth of shares, and are laughing all the way to the bank?

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

And so it begins :(

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...shed-1600-jobs

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

If they're not needed, then they're not needed.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

Spoken like a true Tory,Maggie would have been proud of you.

Re: Was Royal Mail sold too cheaply?
 

The remaining 30% stake in Royal Mail to be sold off.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33004664