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Deutsche Bank bags Postbank

Deutsche Bank has managed to acquire a large stake in rival Postbank, German news agency DPA reported on Thursday, heralding a new wave of consolidation in Germany’s banking sector.

Published: 11 September 2008 17:30 CEST
Deutsche Bank bags Postbank
The Deutsche Bank towers in Frankfurt. Photo: DPA

Deutsche Post succumbed to the advances of Germany’s largest private financial institution, agreeing to sell Deutsche Bank a 29.75 percent stake in Postbank. The €2.5-billion deal is likely to be the first step in a total takeover.

Deutsche Bank has long coveted the banking unit of Deutsche Post, since Postbank’s approximately 14.4 million customers make it the largest retail banking operation in Germany.

DPA said Deutsche Post’s management would sign off on the deal on Friday. “It’s expected to be approved,” a banking source told the news agency. Deutsche Bank will also secure the right to buy the rest of Postbank in the future, but the separate brand will continue to be used.

The news comes only weeks after Commerzbank announced it was acquiring Dresdner Bank for €9.8 billion, challenging Deutsche Bank for its primacy among German private financial institutions.

With But its market capitalization of €7 billion has fallen considerably over the past year.

Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann made no secret of his company’s interest in Postbank at a banking symposium sponsored by business daily Handelsblatt on Wednesday. “We’ve always said on the topic of Postbank that it’s an institution that would strengthen us strategically – both in the private customer sector as well as the distribution network.”

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Can you rely on Sweden’s Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

Wednesday marks the last day you can send first class letters or parcels in Sweden and still hope they'll make it in time for Christmas Eve. But how reliable is PostNord, the company which runs Sweden's postal service?

Published: 20 December 2022 15:16 CET
Can you rely on Sweden's Postnord to deliver cards and presents on time?

What can you still send and hope for it to be delivered by Christmas? 

The Christmas deadline for letters and parcels outside of Sweden already passed on December 12th, as has the deadline for ordering anything online and hoping for it to arrive on time, with most e-commerce companies advising customers that anything ordered later than December 19th will not arrive in time. 

But if you’re sending first-class letters, pre-paid parcels, and small packages for delivery through the letterbox, you can still send them up until December 21st. The same goes for other parcel services such as Postnord MyPack Home, PostNord MyPack Home small, PostNord MyPack Collect, and Postpaket parcels.  

And if you’re willing to pay a bit extra, you can send express mail letters, express parcels, and first class ‘varubrev’ small parcels up until December 22nd. 

“Those dates still apply. We have written in a press statement that if you send by those dates you can be pretty sure that they will arrive in time,” Anders Porelius, head of press at PostNord, told The Local on Tuesday. 

But can you trust Postnord to deliver when they say they will? 

Not entirely.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, Sweden’s postal regulator, ruled on December 8th that the company was failing to meet its regulatory target of delivering 95 percent of all letters within two working days, with 28 million letters delivered late between June and November. 

An investigative documentary by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts) programme, was sent pictures showing huge piles of late, undelivered letters in one of PostNord’s terminals, and interviewed postal workers who said that they were unable to complete their deliveries now they had been moved from daily to every other day, as they had twice as many letters to deliver on the days when they worked. 

“You get yelled at by the customers, and rightly so, you get yelled at by your bosses, and you scold yourself because you feel like you’re not able to do enough,” said Emilia Leijon, one postal worker. “We pretty much never manage to deliver a whole satchel. There’s too much post and too little time.” 

What is PostNord doing about the delays? 

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority has given the company until January 30th to carry out an analysis into why it is not managing to meet its targets, and to draw up an action plan of how it is going to improve. 

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