Royal Mail relinquishes 350-year monopoly
London: The UK Post Office's 350-year-old monopoly on carrying letters ended yesterday, with fourteen companies, including Germany's Deutsche Post and the Dutch postal operator TPG, all set to deliver post.

Competitors will now able to collect, sort and deliver post for the first time since the reign of Charles II. However, the Royal Mail will be the only firm still mandated to provide a service for every address in Britain.

The change has been a controversial one, with consumer watchdogs saying that the only people who will be offered viable alternatives to the Royal Mail from this month will be business consumers as rival companies are expected to concentrate on the more lucrative business sector. For ordinary users of the service, real competition could be several years away.

For Millie Banerjee, the new chairman, the organisation's focus will be on fighting off competitors from the business market, and ensuring that the Royal Mail does not ignore domestic customer's needs.

Unions charge that the opening of the market could jeopardise the one-price-goes-anywhere service, as new business rivals cherry-pick lucrative parts of the market and the loss-making domestic service continues to suffer. The Royal Mail currently loses 5p for every first-class letter posted.
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FTSE posts biggest annual gain in six years
London: The FTSE 100 index has ended 2005 with a yearly gain of over 16 per cent, which is its best annual performance since the end of the dot-com boom. The rise has come on the back of intense M&A activity and handsome corporate profits.

Friday, the last day of trading for the year, marked the market's third consecutive yearly gain despite some last-minute profit taking, leaving the index down on the day. The closing figure marks a 16.7 percent increase for the year, just below the 17.8 percent rise recorded in 1999 when dot-com boom drove the FTSE to a record high.

Investors said that the market had a strong year on the back of mergers and acquisitions and they expect that deals would continue to flow onto the new year. They point out that companies are also revealing very strong balance sheets. This, coupled with the low cost of debt, is indicative of continuing activism at the market as the corporate world would continue to seek deals.

The stock market re-opens on Tuesday after the New Year holiday.
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Venezuela assumes control of 32 privately operated oil fields
Caracas: Venezuelan oil minister Rafael Ramirez has announced Sunday that 32 privately operated Venezuelan oil fields have now returned to state control with the start of the new year.

The announcement has come on the back of a deadline expiring at midnight Dec. 31, under which all private companies with contracts to pump oil in the country agreeing to form joint ventures with the Venezuelan state oil company, giving it majority control.

These operating agreements had been signed between 1990 and 1997. Ramirez said the amount the private companies have invested in the fields will determine the amount of control they have.

In 2001, President Hugo Chavez's government passed a hydrocarbons law that made the operating agreements illegal by requiring oil production to be carried out by companies controlled by the government.

With this decree coming into effect, oil majors such as Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Brazil's state oil company Petrobras S.A. and Spanish-Argentine firm Repsol YPF are among those that have signed contracts agreeing to joint ventures.

Theoretically, the state could take as much as a 90 per cent stake in the new ventures.

The 32 oil fields have been responsible for about 500,000 of Venezuela's official declared production of 3.2 million barrels a day. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and has the largest proven reserves outside the Mid East.
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