Lord Myners to lead review into the IPO process?
After a quiet couple of months, it looks like Royal Mail is at the top of the parliamentary agenda again. Lord Myners has been drafted in to lead yet another review into the handling of the controversial, £3.3bn privatisation of the company, it was reported this morning.
Former City minister Myners will lead a panel of business leaders including Jitesh Gadhia, a non-executive director at UK Financial investments, former Citigroup banker David Challen, London Business School finance professor Francesca Cornelli and M&G Investments corporate governance boss Huw Jones.
Sky News said Myners will assess the reasons behind UK capital markets engage in book-building, look at how other countries price initial public offerings, and investigate the process behind selecting cornerstone investments.
When the Royal Mail listed back in October, shares shot up from their listing price of 330p, rising more than 35 per cent, a mistake which ministers later claimed cost taxpayers £1bn. To make matters worse, many of the institutions engaged to become "long-term" shareholders sold their stakes within days or weeks of the listing, causing retail investors to protest that they had been left out of the process for nothing.
Vince Cable, who championed the privatisation, ordered a review into the IPO back in July.
Myners has already led one review into a botched
Myners has form when it comes to parliamentary reviews. Having – who, lest we forget, abruptly departed the Co-operative Group in April when fellow board members were less enthusiastic than hoped about his review of the company's corporate governance – will als