The share price of International Distributions Services (IDS) rose from 242.10p at the close of trading on Monday to 273.50p earlier today – not far off its 52-week high of 277.50p.
IDS has been named as a possible purchaser for Czech parcels firm Packeta, which has operations in its home market as well as Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany. It delivers to 33 countries worldwide, including the UK.
Packeta said it was open to fresh investors earlier this year. A report in The Times put a potential €500m (£430.7m) price tag on the businesss, which had sales of €255m last year.
In 1999 the then-Royal Mail Group expanded into continental parcel deliveries with the acquisition of German Parcel & General Logistics Systems, now GLS.
Separately, union the CWU has reacted to news that Royal Mail chief people officer Zareena Brown and COO Grant McPherson will leave the business early next year.
CWI general secretary Dave Ward said: “Obviously we really do welcome the news. We’ve always been clear that we would never get Royal Mail back on track unless there was different leadership in the company.
“Imposing revisions that didn’t work, where they’ve cut too many jobs that’s directly the cause of the service problems and treating people in the way that they have… from our perspective seeing them follow Simon Thompson CEO and Stuart MacDonald the industrial relations manager should be taken as a sign that Royal Mail and the new CEO may be listening to what’s going on out in the office and getting ready to work with us to try and put some of these things right.”
Ward said he thought McPherson should have gone “ages ago”, and stated: “People like Grant McPherson are directly responsible for the appalling quality of service that Royal Mail is giving to customers – not our members.
“Let’s hope this is the start of real change at the company along with the work we are doing.”
The CWU also referenced the negative press over recent days – including a front page splash on Saturday’s Daily Mail, about delivery issues at Royal Mail. Yesterday The Guardian ran a piece asking its community to get in touch about their Royal Mail experiences.
“This is not down to frontline postal workers, they are the ones keeping the service going. We’ll be setting out why exactly it’s got to this point and there’s no other way of saying it, it’s directly linked to the previous leadership of Royal Mail and the policies they pursued.
“What’s crucial now is that we focus on restoring quality of service.”
