Investors in Royal Mail (RMG) were delivered some good news this week, courtesy of Ofcom. Following a year-long review, the postal industry's regulator decided not to reintroduce price controls on the carrier’s wholesale or retail price products in the so-called 'access' market.
The relatively benign report, whose publication sparked a 2.5 per cent jump in the company's shares, was commissioned after rival Whistl suspended its door-to-door delivery services in London, Liverpool and Manchester last May. That move effectively left the UK’s dominant postal group as the only provider of end-to-end letter delivery services. As a result, Ofcom decided it needed to review its own regulatory role, amid concerns Royal Mail was operating in a competitive vacuum.