Royal Mail Group PLC boss has chance to push the envelope

To be fair to the () its reputation for losing things pales into insignificance compared to your average airport.

That being said, it does seem rather careless when it comes to retaining chief executives.

I don’t know if it sponsors a football club but it should do because it seems to go through bosses at about the same rate as the average footie club.

Moya Greene, the Arsene Wenger of Royal Mail

Royal Mail floated on the stock exchange on October 15, 2013 at 330p with Moya Greene in charge. She had previously been in charge of Canada Post for five years but jumped ship to the Royal Mail in 2010.

She stuck it for eight years and although she won few popularity contests, especially with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and those who get het up over excessive executive pay (she earned £1.5mln in 2013), she arguably knocked the company into some sort of shape.

Even in 2013, people could see the challenge posed by parcel delivery firms to the profitable part of its business, while the letters side of the business was constrained by the requirement to charge the same amount whether a letter is sent from Land’s End to John O’Groats or from number 32 Acacia Avenue to the house next door.

That requirement seems less of a burden now nobody except your Aunt Madge and utility firms send out letters.

However, throw in a hefty final salary pension scheme obligation and a bolshie workforce and the task facing Greene was undoubtedly a difficult one.

She stepped down in 2018, after which it all started to get a bit post-Arsene Wenger for Royal Mail.

Back was not the future

The interestingly named Rico Back succeeded her. He was a German who lived in Switzerland so people were probably not expecting a happy-go-lucky charmer, although some decent chocolate at Christmas would’ve been nice.

He carried on living in Switzerland so he was well ahead of the curve on this whole remote learning “how do you unmute the microphone?” management by Zoom thing.

Germans are well used to the concept of working hand-in-hand with union representatives for the mutual benefit of the company, which makes it a bit of a surprise that he made such a hash of his negotiations with the Communications Workers Union.

Financial results were nothing to write home about either – not that people write home these days – with profit before tax in the 52 weeks to 2020 sliding to £161mln from £212mln two years earlier.

By the time of the publication of the 2019/20 financial results, Back was gone having achieved what many people thought was impossible, namely attracting more ire over his pay packet than was directed at Moya the Annoyer.

Around 70% of shareholders voted against his pay package, which included a £6mln “golden hello” for leaving the company’s European subsidiary General Logistics Systems. He was paid a basic…