Royal Mail joy as Whistl deal stalls

Royal Mail boss Moya Greene and her team will be wearing broad smiles today following the news that rival Whistl has been forced to shelve expansion of its final mile deliveries after talks broke down with its investment bank.
The company, formerly known as TNT Post UK, was to become a joint venture between original Dutch owners PostNL and Lloyds Bank’s private equity arm LDC after an agreement was reached in December 2013.
However, it appears that while the two organisations agreed to form a joint venture, discussions about LDC’s actual investment in the business were not completed. Some estimates put the cost of Whistl’s planned expansion in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Birmingham at £70m.
LDC was to have held a 60% stake in the Whistl venture, to PostNL’s 40% — with the Dutch firm effectively relinquishing control over the business.
But PostNL has revealed that talks between the two over the expansion of Whistl’s end-to-end operation in the UK have been scrapped.
Whistl now delivers to 2 million households, around 7.4% of all UK homes, compared to 4.1% in 2013.