The Thatcher government privatised large parts of British industry in the 1980s (click here for a short history of privatisation in the UK). But privatising Royal Mail would have been a step too far back in the 1980s. However, this is not the case today as the letter market has contracted due to the advent of technology. Royal Mail is essentially a parcel delivery service and a deliverer of official (usually government) letters, and the former is a growth business thanks to internet shopping. See below a video from MoneyWeek which argues that Royal Mail is a good investment.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...