If ever there was a time the long-suffering
taxpayer deserved a windfall from the State, that time is now.
In the five years since the global financial system was brought to its knees by the greed and criminal irresponsibility of casino bankers, dodgy hedge funds and madcap derivatives traders, ordinary working families have been paying the bill every day in higher taxes, frozen wages, derisory savings rates and vanishing pensions.
So with City analysts predicting that shares in Royal Mail – due to be floated this week – will generate a whacking overnight profit, the Government has a perfect opportunity to offer a small gesture of appreciation for their sacrifice.
Shares in the newly-privatised postal service are expected to go on sale at £3.30 each, but some financial pundits believe they could reach £4.50 by the end of Friday – a 36 per cent return.
True, this would suggest the stock has been seriously undervalued, which means the Treasury will have been short-changed by anything up to £500million.
But at least hundreds of thousands of small investors will reap the benefit.
Or will they? The sale is being handled by Goldman Sachs, the giant Wall Street investment bank – which incidentally was itself forced to pay a record £343million penalty for misleading investors in the run up to the sub-prime crash.
Predictably, Goldman’s has been keen to give priority to its friends in the big City institutions – banks, hedge funds, portfolio managers – leaving small investors to scrabble for less than 30 per cent of the available shares.
So while the City makes a killing, private applicants are set to miss out on at least some, and maybe even all of their application. This simply cannot be allowed to happen.
Having propped up Royal Mail for generations, ordinary taxpayers deserve the chance to share fully in this privatisation bonanza. The Government must insist that more shares are made available to them.
Allowing them to be deprived of their full entitlement by the very people whose recklessness created the financial mess they are still being forced to pay for, would be unforgivable.
In the five years since the global financial system was brought to its knees by the greed and criminal irresponsibility of casino bankers, dodgy hedge funds and madcap derivatives traders, ordinary working families have been paying the bill every day in higher taxes, frozen wages, derisory savings rates and vanishing pensions.
So with City analysts predicting that shares in Royal Mail – due to be floated this week – will generate a whacking overnight profit, the Government has a perfect opportunity to offer a small gesture of appreciation for their sacrifice.
Shares in the newly-privatised postal service are expected to go on sale at £3.30 each, but some financial pundits believe they could reach £4.50 by the end of Friday – a 36 per cent return.
True, this would suggest the stock has been seriously undervalued, which means the Treasury will have been short-changed by anything up to £500million.
But at least hundreds of thousands of small investors will reap the benefit.
Or will they? The sale is being handled by Goldman Sachs, the giant Wall Street investment bank – which incidentally was itself forced to pay a record £343million penalty for misleading investors in the run up to the sub-prime crash.
Predictably, Goldman’s has been keen to give priority to its friends in the big City institutions – banks, hedge funds, portfolio managers – leaving small investors to scrabble for less than 30 per cent of the available shares.
So while the City makes a killing, private applicants are set to miss out on at least some, and maybe even all of their application. This simply cannot be allowed to happen.
Having propped up Royal Mail for generations, ordinary taxpayers deserve the chance to share fully in this privatisation bonanza. The Government must insist that more shares are made available to them.
Allowing them to be deprived of their full entitlement by the very people whose recklessness created the financial mess they are still being forced to pay for, would be unforgivable.
I'm especially proud of what they did for Gary McKinnon.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have Asperger Syndrome and that prison sentence would have been his death sentence.
They say that the turning point came when Cameron told Theresa May she'd lose her job if he committed suicide.
Politicians only ever do anything to save their own skins.
Dacre, undeniably one of the great editors whatever else when may be, has been losing it of late, as we now see.
ReplyDeleteStill, he would have been 65 next month whatever else had happened.