
Post apocalypse – Poste Italiane’s IPO - coloneltcb
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21673561-postal-service-set-sell-40-itself-italys-biggest-privatisations-16-years-poste?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/Poste_Italiane
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kalleboo
A few random comments on things not touched upon by the article

\- Japan Post, mentioned in the article, also has large banking and insurance
arms

\- The Swedish postal service (now PostNord) has a large banking operation
which was divested in the privatisation process in the 90's. I assume similar
things happened to the other European postal services compared to in the
table/article. I guess what's going to happen in Italy is the same thing where
the profitable financial stuff will be snapped up and postal service will
continue to limp along.

\- In most countries I've visited I've preferred the old "traditional" postal
operator to newcomer courier services for parcel delivery. In Sweden, parcel
companies would always force you to miss a day of work to stay home, and then
avoid ringing your doorbell, etc... bad service overall. Here in Australia,
TNT (who deliver for Apple) would not even deliver within 50 km of where I
live, and had to leave my parcel with a newsagent 50 km away "who they usually
leave packages with in difficult cases like this". In both cases, the
traditional mail services (Posten/PostNord and Australia Post) have far more
location and can leave packages for pick-up nearby. It seems like the issue is
making better service more profitable. Perhaps residential customers are all a
loss?

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Gys
Truly a great choice for an image to go with the article. Its from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Postino:_The_Postman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Postino:_The_Postman)
I love that movie ! Being a romantic poet is all about talking in metaphors
;-)

~~~
kfk
Didn't watch it, not sure I can, Troisi died in the making of that movie
overworking himself to death (he had a heart condition). He was probably the
last of the big starts of the Italian cinema, we are still waiting for a new
Troisi.

