Cable defends Royal Mail sale but won’t name key investors
MINISTERS and advisers leading the Royal Mail float yesterday insisted the sale was a success, arguing that a higher price might have imperilled the sale and that the priority investors chosen were suitable.
In his latest appearance in front of the business select committee to defend the £1.7bn Royal Mail stake sale, business secretary Vince Cable said 11 of the 16 priority investors still own their shares in the postal service, holding 60 per cent of the shares in issue. However, he refused to name the publicly, offering instead to send a confidential list to the committee.
A handful of the key investors, including Lansdowne and the sovereign wealth funds of Singapore and Kuwait, have already been revealed, but Cable declined to confirm a longer list published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism yesterday.
When asked whether he would say sorry for how he handled the float, Cable said: “Absolutely no apology and a recognition that hindsight is a wonderful thing about price.”