La Poste (France)
La Poste is a postal service company in France, operating in Metropolitan France, the five French overseas departments and regions and the overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Under bilateral agreements, La Poste also has responsibility for mail services in Monaco through La Poste Monaco and in Andorra alongside the Spanish company Correos.
| Company type | Public limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Postal services, courier |
| Founded | 1991 (first occurrence of French national postal services in 1477) |
| Headquarters | 9 rue du Colonel Pierre Avia, 75015 Paris , France |
Area served | France / Monaco / Andorra |
Key people | Philippe Wahl (CEO) |
| Services | Letter post, parcel service, banking, insurance, mobile network operator |
| Revenue | €34.6 billion (2021) |
Net income | €2.1 billion (2021) |
| Total equity | €20.9 billion (2021) |
| Owner | Caisse des dépôts (66%) French government (34%) |
Number of employees | 249,304 (2019) |
| Parent | Groupe La Poste |
| Subsidiaries | La Banque postale, La Poste Mobile, Poste Immo, Geopost, Docaposte, DPDgroup, GREENOVIA, Viapost, Mediapost |
| Website | www |
The company was created in 1991 following the split of the French PTT, a government department responsible for mail, telegraph and telephone services in France. The PTT, founded in 1879, was then divided between La Poste, which became responsible for postal service, and France Télécom (nowadays Orange) for the telecommunication services. France Télécom was immediately privatised but La Poste has remained a public company. However, in 1997 EU directive 97/67/EC required member states to "fully open the postal sector to competition", with the result that the French government allowed private postal service companies in 2005 and transformed La Poste into a public-owned company limited by shares in 2010.
La Poste is part of the Groupe La Poste, which also comprises a bank and insurance company (La Banque postale), a logistics service company (DPDgroup) and a mobile network operator (La Poste Mobile). Although its postal activities are declining because of the development of the Internet, they still represented half of the company's income. Other activities, such as parcel delivery and banking, are on the rise. The two represented respectively a quarter of the company's income in 2017.