Royal Mail staff must wait for full shares allocation

Royal Mail employees will not receive their full free share allocation until April 2014.

Using calculations based on a maximum share price offer of 330p per share, the 150,000 eligible full-time employees were due to immediately receive around 725 free shares each, while part-time staff would receive a smaller number of shares on a pro-rata basis.

Vince Cable, business secretary, confirmed that Royal Mail employees would be given 10% of the organisation’s shares after its flotation on the London Stock Exchange on 11 October.

The surge in the share price once normal market trading began, from 330p to an average 540p per share within a few days, meant that the 10% share offer had to be amended.

This is because employee participants in a tax-approved share incentive plan (Sip), the share scheme being used by the postal workers as a home for free shares, are only allowed a maximum investment of £3,000 worth of free shares per year.

Thus, the surge in the Royal Mail share price put the value of the free shares above the annual limit by around £1,000.

The organisation will provide employee with 613 shares, instead of the allocated 725, in the current tax year, and will hand out the remaining shares after April 2014.

A spokesperson from the Royal Mail, said: “This means that 150,000 postal workers will have to wait until 7 April before they can receive into their individual Sip accounts the delayed balance of their free share allocation – the ‘missing’ 112 shares each.

“Nevertheless, postal employees will hardly be complaining about the much-enhanced value of their free share allocations.”