When Cox took the job, in September 1999, the Mail was selling an average of 765,128 copies an issue.
At the height of the Boer war, just four years after its founding, the Mail was selling well over 900,000 copies.
Has Royal Mail been sold too cheap?
So, just 30,597 copies of the Mail were sold in a city, Britain's second most populous, with more than one million residents.
The government reiterated its pledge to maintain the universal service obligation to deliver mail six days a week to villages as well as cities at the same prices no matter how Royal Mail is sold.
Would Royal Mail be sold to any company with an asset-stripping reputation, asked Lord Christopher (no shortage of such companies and no shortage either of valuable Royal Mail properties in all our cities and towns).
Shares accounting for 60% of Royal Mail were sold in the flotation.
Zimbra, an e-mail software start-up, was sold for $350 million to Yahoo in 2007.
Andy Ellwood, an executive at Gowalla. a mobile application, received several e-mails when the service was sold to Facebook in December.
"Small entrepreneurial ventures will help create the ecosystem for entrepreneurs and investors in tech, which will lead to more jobs," said Samih Toukan, founder of the Arabic e-mail service Maktoob.com, which was sold to Yahoo in a landmark $175 million deal in 2009 to become Yahoo Maktoob.
