Sale of Virgin Media completed....

Buzby

The deal is done - US Liberty Global are now the primary owners of UK's Virgin Media. Seems they are happy to retain the current branding (for now).

New CEO is Tom Mockridge, and Mr Branson's involvement appears to be simply renting the brand.

sniggings

Buzby wrote: »

The deal is done - US Liberty Global are now the primary owners of UK's Virgin Media. Seems they are happy to retain the current branding (for now).

New CEO is Tom Mockridge, and Mr Branson's involvement appears to be simply renting the brand.

a fair few of Virgin business are just using the Virgin name, Richard Branson has no involvement.

I used to respect the Virgin brand but now when I see the name Virgin I think of an over priced product masquerading as a good deal.

mije1983

Yes a lot of the companies licence the name from Virgin Group. I believe this was also the case with Virgin Media, as Richard Branson only seemed to have a minority shareholding before the buyout.

[Deleted User]

mije1983 wrote: »

I believe this was also the case with Virgin Media, as Richard Branson only seemed to have a minority shareholding before the buyout.

Branson sold what shares he had years ago.
In addition his involvement was purely cosmetic in the early years of the re-branding from Telewest and NTL and he never owned nor ran the merged company.

Buzby

It appears Virgin Wine has gone the same way..... It does seem the brand is suffering from over-exposure.

mije1983

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Branson sold what shares he had years ago.

According to this he did still have shares in Virgin Media.

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

In addition his involvement was purely cosmetic in the early years of the re-branding from Telewest and NTL and he never owned nor ran the merged company.

Yes, this is what I meant when I mentioned Virgin Group licencing the Virgin name.

Buzby wrote: »

It appears Virgin Wine has gone the same way..... It does seem the brand is suffering from over-exposure.

I didn't realise just how many different Virgin companies there are, but Richard Branson appears to have little or no involvement in the majority of them now.

It seems that the business plan is to build them up, then sell them off when they are at their peak for maximum profit. With additional money for the privilege of carrying on using the Virgin name of course! Fair play to him though, it's worked pretty well so far!

macman

Branson doesn't need to build them up to sell them, he simply offers a branding deal in return for a royalty and a nominal stake. That what what was done with NTL and TeleWest.

[Deleted User]

macman wrote: »

Branson doesn't need to build them up to sell them, he simply offers a branding deal in return for a royalty and a nominal stake. That what what was done with NTL and TeleWest.

Yes, he actually took a salary for his personal appearances promoting the "new" Virgin Media. However, little other than the name was changed, largely to distance the merged cable companies from the negative image built up mainly by NTL ("NTL Hell") over the years.

Now Liberty own the company, Branson has taken a further cut of the proceeds as part of the agreement signed to allow the use of the Virgin name.

thor

I agree with one of the previous posters. I view any product with the 'virgin' branding as crap value, proved emphatically by their bank and railway offerings.

prowla

So the Virgin brand is just a kind of franchise.

macman

Indeed. Branson has never even sat on the board of VM.
Virgin Atlantic was the only company in which he appeared to take an active role in the actual operational side, and that was years ago.