Amazon Is Killing The Royal Mail - And The Government Is Doing Nothing About It

The Royal Mail is having a terrible day, after the UK regulatory office for communications, Ofcom, said that the company is not under threat from lower-cost competitors such as Amazon.

Its stock lost more than 3% on Tuesday morning.

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The company was the worst performer in the FTSE100 list, the 100 biggest listed companies in the London Stock Exchange:

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Ofcom released this note this morning (emphasis added):

Having carefully assessed this evidence, including the confidential business plans of Royal Mail and its largest competitor Whistl, Ofcom does not believe the universal service is currently under threat from competition in the 'direct delivery' market, where operators collect and deliver letters themselves without using Royal Mail's network.

Ofcom has therefore decided, in a separate statement on competition today, not to impose new regulatory conditions on Royal Mail's direct-delivery competitors.

Royal Mail was hoping for measures to put a break on courier services like Amazon and UPS, who are slicing up the old monopoly's share of the market.

The BBC wrote that the company has been complaining that competitors are being allowed to cherry-pick more lucrative delivery areas.

This is a second recent blow for the newly privatised company. On November 19, the company's CEO Moya Green declared that: "the impact of Amazon delivering an increasing number of its own parcels using its own delivery network will reduce the annual rate of growth in our addressable market to 1-2 per cent."

That admission had also caused a big fall in the company's stock:

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Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.