Of all the takeover battles currently on the table, none is more important to Britain than the proposed sell-out of International Distribution Services, the owner of Royal Mail, to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky.
The passive manner in which the board agreed to the deal and Kretinsky’s weak commitments is shameful.
Chairman Keith Williams and his team must resign and make way for a new director who is better able to run an essential utility in the interests of all stakeholders, including consumers and postal operators.
The rush to finalize the deal runs parallel to the election timetable. Under normal circumstances, this is a transaction that would have attracted the full attention of the Commons Business Committee, with testimony from all key players, including Kretinsky and his chief operating officer Roman Silha.
The fallout from such hearings, focusing on the fate of an institution that served the country for 508 years, would have been enough to destroy the country.
Crucial utility: Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s £3.6 billion bid for Royal Mail owner International Distribution Services has been approved by the company’s board
The election has brought the functioning of the House of Commons, Whitehall and the regulator Ofcom to a standstill.
No such barriers exist for a City deal, which risks slipping under the wire while the government is otherwise busy.
Such a sale, with a huge impact on the NHS and HMRC’s operations, should have attracted the attention of the government and the opposition.
Instead there are bland words from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and doubts about Britain’s need to attract foreign capital.
Ownership of the Royal Mail should be an open target for a future Labor government, partly funded by the unions.
Labour’s economic team, led by Rachel Reeves and Jonathan Reynolds, have acted like rabbits in the headlights, perhaps fearful of disrupting the idea that Keir Starmer’s party is business-friendly.
Ownership of the Royal Mail should be a top issue in a campaign dominated by empty pledges.
Modefandango
A £50 billion stock market listing in London was always going to be irresistible to the City and British politicians.
So it was likely that an IPO for Singapore-based fast fashion champion Shein would always be embraced.
In recent years, much of the movement has been in the opposite direction, with many US executives seeking the get-rich-quick pay scale.
Justifying high wages in London is more difficult, as protests over the £8.2m package for Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea demonstrate.
The issues surrounding Shein are complex. Chairman Donald Tang and founder Chris Xu would always consider a New York float a big ask.
Rabid anti-China sentiment in the US was a major hurdle. Although Shein is based in Singapore, the engine is located in the People’s Republic and there are high suspicions about working conditions.
It cannot be said that British investors are less supportive of this. Boohoo came under heavy fire for the conditions in its factories.
The 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh shone a sharp light on conditions there and prompted Primark, among others, to push for higher construction and factory standards.
Tang has made significant efforts to bring both government and Labor politicians to justice, including Shadow Business Secretary Reynolds.
There will be an intense focus on Shein, known for its cheap, disposable fashion. But Britain pays little attention to the production of other goods made in China, ranging from electric vehicles to laptops. Picking and choosing is hypocritical.
Shein will provide a much-needed confidence boost to an undervalued stock market.
Music stopped
You couldn’t help but notice the heavy obituaries of music philanthropist Sir Ian Stoutzker.
He was the first investment banker I ever interviewed in the excited days of the Barber boom of the 1970s.
He was one of the group of executives who headed the investment bank Keyser Ullmann, which was bailed out by the Bank of England when the property bubble burst.
His career was revived during a stint at another financial group, Dawnay Day, which acquired remnants of Keyser’s operations.
The rises and falls in the real estate sector are an enduring feature of free market capitalism, as the Chinese are learning.