ALEX BRUMMER: Watching marauders flounder is a boost for Moya Greene as she seeks to bring private sector discipline to Royal Mail

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Centre stage: Royal Mail chief executive Moya Greene

Is the Royal Mail lucky or not? The privatisation in 2013 was badly flawed because of City advice which led to the shares being grossly undervalued.

Moreover, having promised that a chunk of the shares would be reserved for UK long-term investors, among those who made the biggest profits were a select group of hedge and sovereign wealth funds.

The achievement was that a public asset, which previous governments had been too squeamish to sell-off, finally was brought to the stock market. Clearly, the issue was mispriced with the valuation failing to reflect its property assets, such as the large-scale Mount Pleasant development in central London, and the value of the European parcels business GLS.

The challenges for the Royal Mail came in the shape of competition from more efficient private-sector players in the parcels market and the secular decline in ‘snail’ mail.

Big market shares in both post and parcels always made the Royal Mail a formidable beast. But it was assumed that its sub-optimal services, such as poor tracking of parcels and queues at Post Offices, would always put it at a disadvantage to low-cost, non-unionised newcomers.

Instead of eating its dinner it has been the newer entrants to the market that have suffered. In the unsafe hand of private equity – which does not like to hang around if things are going wrong – the plug was pulled on City Link over the Christmas holiday by owner Better Capital. Now Whistl, formerly Dutch-owned TNT Post, is laying off 1800 workers in Manchester, Liverpool and London after the private equity arm of Lloyds Bank LDC decided enough is enough. It looks very much like curtains for its end-to-end delivery service in the UK.

All this must be good for the Royal Mail. It has indicated in the past that if Whistl met its objectives of 40 per cent household coverage, the impact on its own revenues could be in the order of £200m a year.

Those with an eye on Britain’s electronics market will see a parallel. The demise of Zavvi, HMV and Comet breathed life back into Dixons, owner of Currys and PC World, which has since bulked up through its merger with Carphone Warehouse.

Watching the marauders flounder must be a real boost for chief executive Moya Greene as she seeks to bring private sector disciplines to the Royal Mail. She could never have dreamed that Royal Mail’s domination of UK deliveries would be restored so quickly.

Barclays bother

The sins of the past continue to poison the reputation of Barclays. Anytime soon the bank is expected to plead guilty to having rigged the foreign exchange markets and is expected to pay a £2bn fine for its mistakes.

In settling the outstanding issues over its poor behaviour in the currency markets, Barclays has taken the opposite approach to that which it took on Libor. When it admitted to Libor fixing in June 2012, ahead of most of its competitors, it received relatively lenient treatment in the shape of £290m fine.

But the shock of the disclosures meant it took the brunt of the criticism and first its chief executive Bob Diamond was shown the door and shortly afterwards chairman Marcus Agius retired.

This time around, Barclays declined to join other banks in reaching a settlement with Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission in November 2014. Instead it has opted to wait for the verdict from New York’s Department of Financial Services run by the aggressive Benjamin Lawsky.

He can be difficult and last year delivered a £6bn fine to France’s BNP Paribas over sanctions busting despite some frantic lobbying from the government in Paris.

Barclays has already provided £2.05bn for forex market transgressions, so the impact on its shares should be cushioned. But this is by no means the end of its conduct problems.

It is still grappling with the US authorities over its behaviour in ‘dark pool’ markets for equity trading. Some of its traders could yet face prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office for foreign exchange offences.

New chairman John McFarlane has a big task ahead if he is to restore the bank to its pristine Quaker roots.

Real winner

The owners of Picasso’s ‘Women of Algiers’ will no doubt be delighted at the record £115m price obtained for the painting in New York as part of a Christie’s sale that raised £464m.

In this age of ‘quantitative easing,’ the art market has looked like a safe shelter for wealth. As well as being something beautiful to behold, the Picasso has been a good investment yielding 10 per cent a year since it was last sold in 1997. A big winner from the current boom is Christie’s which rakes off a 12 per cent commission. Not bad for a few minutes work.

The French proprietor of the auction house François Pinault may well feel able to crack open a bottle or two of Château Latour – which he also owns.