Kemi Badenoch threatens to block Royal Mail deal to foreign owners unless guarantees are issued
Kemi Badenoch has issued warnings to the Royal Mail that she will block any foreign buyer unless cast-iron guarantees are put in place.
The business and trade secretary is reported by the MailOnline to have told Royal Mail bosses that she won’t allow it to be sold to a foreign buyer until guarantees over the protection of vital services are put in place.
It was revealed back in April that Daniel Křetínský, who is known as the ‘Czech Sphinx’, had put a bid in to buy the Royal Mail’s parent company International Distributions Services (IDS).
On Wednesday, the board of IDS announced that it is “minded” to accept a raised takeover offer worth around £3.5bn from the Czech billionaire. His EP Group already holds a roughly 27.6 per cent stake in IDS through its affiliate group Vesa Equity.
Badenoch has called for cast-iron guarantees which includes maintaining the current six-days-a-week deliveries. Despite that it is reported the UK Government is not planning to take such drastic action to stop the deal.
But Ministers are determined to extract guarantees from would-be buyer Czech billionaire before the deal goes through. Badenoch is expected to meet Kretinsky for her to outline the Government’s position, but the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to safeguard the post but said it was ultimately up to the IDS to decide whether to sell the firm.
Kretinsky has insisted he would maintain the one-price-goes-anywhere service across the UK and first-class deliveries six days a week. He has also promised that Royal Mail will keep its headquarters in the UK.
Since the announcement of the deal, the IDS share prices have jumped to 320p.