Four years ago next month Royal Mail began life as a publicly listed company. The flotation of the state-owned postal operator was probably one of the more controversial actions of the old coalition government and became the subject of endless debate over whether the taxpayer had been cheated by its investment banking advisers or had actually secured a rather good deal.
With Royal Mail shares having lost a little over a tenth of their value since the IPO and just over a third peak-to-trough, there seems to be a reasonable case that, at least from a strict investment perspective, the government did not do too badly.
This was further confirmed with this week’s FTSE 100 reshuffle that saw the postal operator relegated, an inevitable outcome