USPS Said No To White House on 5-Day Test - August 2, 2010
[Dead Tree Edition.]The U.S. Postal Service declined The White House’s suggestion that it conduct a pilot test of five-day delivery, according to a document made public this week.
“I believe a pilot test would not produce substantive results that could be used to decide whether to make the change nationwide permanent,” wrote Postmaster General Jack Potter in an April 26 letter to Dr. Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House National Economic Council. “Our customers likely would, at best, find a pilot test to be confusing, and, at worst, costly and time-consuming.”
The Postal Service released the letter (in the last three pages of this document) in response to questioning during the Postal Regulatory Commission’s proceedings on whether Saturday delivery can be eliminated. Potter wrote that his letter was a response to Summers’ “recent question about the viability of the U.S. Postal Service conducting a pilot test of delivering mail five days a week.”
“The plan to eliminate carrier delivery service on Saturday . . . would save the Postal Service a projected $3.1 billion annually,” Potter wrote, without addressing whether the change would reduce revenue as well.
Paid not to work
“During such a test, we would be unable to make the permanent, necessary changes to our delivery workforce, transportation networks, and mail processing operations that would yield the projected $3.1 billion savings. The largest financial impact of a pilot would be the fact that many career employees in the pilot area would have to be paid not to work or be relocated, while many of our non-career and part-time employees would see their wages reduced or eliminated.”
Confining the pilot test to a particular region would raise issues of fairness and might violate “the statutory mandate of providing universal service to the nation,” Potter wrote.
“A pilot test, with all of the challenges that would arise, would not demonstrate the efficacy in which we could perform five-day delivery moving forward, and thus, may raise doubt among the public of our ability to do so.”
Potter’s letter provided some insight into how a shift to five-day delivery would affect employees:
“The five-day delivery proposal anticipates the reduction of approximately 25,000 full-time City Carrier assignments and $2.2 billion in annual savings in City Carrier operations” because “regular Carriers assigned to a single route would have Saturday and Sunday off, eliminating the need for the Carrier Technician and Relief Carrier assignments. We plan to transition full-time Carrier Technician assignments into Carrier positions (that cover a single route) that become available through attrition.”
New Zealand Post's Free Postage Helps the Helpers - August 2, 2010
[Press Release.]For the 12th year running, New Zealand Post is making postage included envelopes available for community organisations across New Zealand through its annual Community Post programme.
Postal services chief executive Peter Fenton said: "New Zealand Post is represented throughout New Zealand’s communities in many ways. Through Community Post we help the helpers in these communities.
"We're pleased that we can use our postal resources to support the thousands of non-profit community organisations across the country that in turn help Kiwis – in education, health and welfare, sport and recreation, arts and culture and the environment."
This year, another 1.5 million envelopes are being made available to community groups across New Zealand, bringing the total of free postage envelopes to over 12.5 million since the Community Post programme started in 1998.
The programme supports non-profit organisations by assisting them with postage to carry out projects in their region for the benefit of the communities within that area.
TNT to Split into Two Divisions - August 2, 2010
[Michael Steen, Financial Times.]
TNT came a step closer to a break-up of its postal and express delivery businesses on Monday, with the Dutch group saying it had decided on a full separation of the two divisions as it reported a slump in profit due to the reorganisation of its mail business.
The diverging circumstances of the two units – a mail business restructuring in a shrinking, mostly domestic market and a global express delivery business growing in emerging markets – had prompted the group to opt for a full separation of the The group had already said it wanted to spin off the mail operations, though Mr Bakker said that scenario had included the possibility of a partial, rather than full, separation of the two units.
TNT will split the businesses internally by January and had engaged advisers to consider “different forms of capital market transactions”, to separate the equity of the two divisions, he said.
“What we want to show today is we’re not going for half solutions, we’re going for a full separation,” he added.
Mr Bakker would not be drawn on who would lead the new companies. He presented the second-quarter results alongside a new chief financial officer, Bernard Bot, a former management consultant who has been at TNT since 2005. He replaces Henk van Dalen who suddenly resigned to join Vimpelcom, the Russian telecoms group, as chief financial officer.
As recently as December, Mr Bakker had described calls from investors to break up the group as “disruptive”, while simultaneously acknowledging that the group’s strategy of becoming a leading European postal operator would have to be dropped given the “distorted” way European mail markets were being opened up to competition.
While facing fierce competition in a liberalised home market, TNT had found it hard to enter other European markets, some of which have yet to liberalise their postal markets.
“If you shrink [the European mail ambitions], you also reduce the synergy potential between the Express network and the postal network in all the European countries,” Mr Bakker said on Monday.
TNT’s second-quarter net profit fell 96 per cent to €3m or 28 cents a share because it made a €168m ($219.5m) provision for restructuring the Dutch postal operation. Postal volumes are shrinking 7-9 per cent per year and TNT is shifting its work force from full-time delivery staff to part-time and cutting 11,000 jobs.
The group said it expected to make further provisions of €150m for the restructuring.
In the express delivery business, the group reported volumes and revenues back at 2007 levels but said yields fell, both compared with 2007 and year on year.
Japan Post's Package Ops Delivered Bigger Losses In FY09 - August 2, 2010
[Press Release.]Japan Post Service Co.'s parcel business suffered a 12.7 billion yen operating loss in fiscal 2009, 3.5 times worse than a year earlier and its third straight year in the red.
Amid the economic downturn, sales per parcel declined. System costs weighed on earnings as well.
Although packages handled by the Japan Post Holdings Co. unit increased, its flagship Yu-Pack service sustained a 4.7% decline. Yu-Pack's prolonged delivery delays this month have led customers to look elsewhere, boding poorly for its earnings prospects this fiscal year as well.
The postal company's mail delivery business saw a 17% jump in operating profit to 58.9 billion yen. Express and other mail operations entailing special handling turned profitable after the firm discontinued a service that required recipients to sign off on deliveries. Margins on letters and postcards fell.
Brazil's President Removes Post Office Chief - July 29, 2010
[Tom Murphy, Dow Jones .]Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday removed the director of the country's postal service, according to a statement published by the federal government's news service.
The statement said only that Postal Service President Carlos Henrique Custodio had been "relieved of office, effective immediately," following a meeting with Communications Minister Davi Jose de Mattos.
Postfinance Posts Another Substantial Profit Increase - July 29, 2010
[Press Release.]Successful first half: in the first six months of the year, PostFinance again increased profit substantially to CHF 274 million.Over the same period, the financial institution acquired 53,000 new customers and opened 87,000 new accounts.The average assets under management rose to CHF 82 billion.Moreover, PostFinance created 158 full-time positions throughout Switzerland, thanks to this growth.
PostFinance can look back on a successful first half in 2010:it generated a profit of CHF 274 million (+37% over the prior-year period).This is due to higher customer assets, success in the investment business and to systematic cost discipline.The number of new customers and customer deposits went up in line with the profit trend.53,000 new customers opened 87,000 new accounts in the first six months of the year.2.7 million customers currently entrust their money to PostFinance, which manages four million accounts.
Increase in customer deposits
PostFinance enjoys a high level of trust among the public.This is seen clearly in the trend in average assets under management, which amounted to CHF 81.6 bn in mid-year or CHF 8.3 bn more than the 2009 yearly average.The growth trend during the first six months was very steady.PostFinance has therefore succeeded in further increasing customer deposits, after the peak of the financial crisis.
Conservative mortgage policy
The mortgage volume rose in the reporting period by CHF 251 m to CHF 2.92 bn (end-2009: CHF 2.67 bn).Together with extensions for existing customers, the volume of mortgages granted amounted to CHF 576 m.Despite fiercer competition among mortgage lenders, PostFinance will continue its conservative approach to risk together with its partner, Münchener Hypothekenbank.This approach is paying off, as PostFinance has not reported any mortgage defaults so far.
PostFinance creating jobs
PostFinance has been one of the biggest employment providers in Switzerland for years.This encouraging trend has continued this year.With 158 new jobs created, headcount throughout Switzerland has risen to 3,200.Since the end of 1998, PostFinance has doubled the number of employees.Headcount continues to expand: over the next few years, there are plans to develop sales for private and SME customers and customer service.
Australia Post to Mentor Young Refugees - July 28, 2010
[Press Release.]A group of 13 young refugees will receive mentoring and access to social and business networks through the launch of Ucan2, a collaboration between Australia Post and Foundation House, one of Victoria's leading support organisations for refugees.
The refugees, aged between 16 and 24, will be mentored by 13 Australia Post staff with the goal of increasing education, training and employment opportunities in their first 15 months of settlement into Australia.
Australia Post's CEO and MD, Ahmed Fahour, and Foundation House Executive Director, Paris Aristotle, will today sign an MOU that signals Australia Post's intention to provide ongoing in-kind support of the Ucan2 program to achieve social inclusion goals for the refugee community.
"Our workplaces, and our employees, at Australia Post provide a magnificent window on the role that business can play as an enabler of social integration," Australia Post CEO and MD, Ahmed Fahour says.
"We want to lead by example, and I appeal to other corporations to open up their networks for the refugee community to access new social, education and employment contacts."
Russia Post Gets Fined for Late Deliveries - July 27, 2010
[Russia Today.]This comes after a check on express delivery performed by a state watchdog in which supervisors sent express letters to different regions in Russia and monitored their arrival time.
During the check, the mail service delivered four out of ten letters late, signaling that even if you pay for express service, the letters will still arrive very slowly – maybe even after letters posted in normal mail.
The supervising body initiated court proceeding, and the court found the Postal Service guilty and fined it 30,000 rubles (about $1,000). Although the sum is not particularly large, the supervisors hope that it will serve as a wake-up call.
“As a matter of fact, the situation with mail deliveries is getting worse, as previous checks did not discover any delivery-time problems,” Sergey Ukhartsev, from the Federal Service for the Oversight of Communications, told RT. “Or perhaps we were just looking at the most problematic regions. Anyway, we hope that the fine we've issued will make them improve the delivery process.”
This is not the first time that the reliability of Russia’s Postal Service has been questioned.
Back in April, there was a problem with international delivery, which, the Russian Post said, was connected to their foreign colleagues’ delays. In response, companies such as eBay threatened to blacklist Russia.
In addition, recently Russia’s Postal Service has come in for sharp criticism for anti-competitive practices in tendering suppliers.
FedEx Corp. Increases Earnings Outlook - July 27, 2010
[Press Release.]FedEx Corporation announced that it expects earnings to be in the range of $1.05 to $1.25 per diluted share for the first quarter ending August 31, up 81% to 116% from $0.58 per diluted share a year ago. The company’s previous guidance for the quarter was $0.85 to $1.05 per diluted share.
For the full year, FedEx expects earnings per diluted share of $4.60 to $5.20, up from $4.40 to $5.00, which reflects the current market outlook for fuel prices and a continued moderate recovery in the global economy. The company reported earnings of $3.76 per diluted share last year.
“Our revenue and earnings growth are exceeding original expectations, primarily due to better-than-expected growth in FedEx Express and FedEx Ground volumes,” said Alan B. Graf Jr., FedEx Corp. executive vice president and chief financial officer. “Our package volume growth rates in our first quarter are continuing at a pace similar to our fourth quarter.” Of particular benefit to our earnings is the continued strong demand for our higher-margin FedEx International Priority (IP) package and freight services, with IP package volumes expected to grow more than 20% again this quarter. Customers are favorably responding to our superior service offerings, the capabilities of our unparalleled global network and the best-in-market cut-off times we now offer from numerous points in Asia.”
With the improved outlook, FedEx is also planning to fully restore the company match for 401(k) plans at all FedEx companies effective January 1, 2011. The cost of this restoration is included in the company’s earnings outlook.
FedEx will release the details of its first quarter results on September 16, 2010.
Restructuring Programme (2010-2015) to Save Polish Post 420m euro - July 26, 2010
[The News.]8,000 postal employees are expected to be laid off following the closure of around 1,400 post offices across the country.
Some post offices may be downgraded to so-called postal agencies, which make money from commission gained from services and sales. However, the result of the restructuring may mean that post offices may simply disappear from many smaller towns nationwide.
The move will also change the internal structure of the Polish Post, including the streamlining of some processes and the offering of new services.
The company wants to resign from outsourcing some of its services to limit the number of jobs it has to cut, with some workers set to be transferred from post offices billed for closure.
The plans are may save the Polish Post from financial collapse, yet the restructuring must first be approved by the trade unions.
USPS Said No To White House on 5-Day Test - August 2, 2010
New Zealand Post's Free Postage Helps the Helpers - August 2, 2010
TNT to Split into Two Divisions - August 2, 2010
Japan Post's Package Ops Delivered Bigger Losses In FY09 - August 2, 2010
Brazil's President Removes Post Office Chief - July 29, 2010
Postfinance Posts Another Substantial Profit Increase - July 29, 2010
Australia Post to Mentor Young Refugees - July 28, 2010
Russia Post Gets Fined for Late Deliveries - July 27, 2010
Restructuring Programme (2010-2015) to Save Polish Post 420m euro - July 26, 2010
