Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He does not own or run Virgin Media. he just gets paid by Telewest/NTL a sum of money as payment to use the Virgin brand name.

Can we make this a sticky?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

why should it be made as sticky? does it bare any relevance to the service and who actually owns the name and runs the company?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

may i ask whats the point? doesn't he hold shares?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He never owned VM.
The Virgin name and his name are used to market NTL Groups business. The rebranding hoped to give the company a better reputation.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

No. It makes no difference if people think he is or not. For some reason it appears a number of people get annoyed when it is suggested but it's hardly cause for concern.

If you feel that strongly about it why not put something in your sig about it?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I keep seeing and reading Virgin customers blaming Richard for what's going on at Virgin Media. if it was a sticky then they would know that he doesn't own the company.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

If it wasn't an abuse of my modding stuff I'd be adding 'I couldn't give a smeg' option....

I just don't see what difference it makes.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He owns about 10%

---------- Post added at 11:15 ---------- Previous post was at 11:12 ----------

Fair enough if you don't see that it makes a difference or not, but I think it would make a difference by people not writing to him instead of writing to Virgin.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

As of now, you may consider it a member request :p:

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I don't like clutter :)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Apart from the poll this is a duplicate thread as to THIS THREAD only a few months old, and I'm sure that if you go further back they'll be lots more threads

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

It's just a shame it's not another valid (in my opinion anyway) option that isn't on the poll.

So I had to voice it in the thread.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

stop making threads then ;)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Mr. Branson own 10.7% of Virgin Media (Not 10%).

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

:) I like getting people talking. people don't talk to each other enough in this country.

---------- Post added at 11:22 ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 ----------


It's 10.5% (Not 10.7%)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I will put a spanner in the works here, Virgin has a well known brand, that is renowned for its trustworthyness, the name was created by Sir. Richard, and this is probabely the reason why NTL wanted to use it, to bring in more customers, but it has not worked, has it, the slagging off VM are getting now, Sir Richard would not put up with it, if VM did belong to him, would he, this is the reason why, VM (have already said) would sell the TV side, if the price was right, say 600million quid,

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Want to make a bet of that :)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He might not own it but the deal he did made him the largest single sharholder in Virgin Media AFAIK.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Have you heard that rumour about Virgin is going on Dragons Den to ask for the same amount for a 50% cut of the bank loan? :D

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

They took, and some say continue to take a "slagging off" from Virgin Rail customers, you don't see Sir Richard dumping that do you?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

The only reason a company will be slagged off once been rebranding to Virgin is because automatically people think the company is gonna be great due to the Virghin brand happen with the rail ways

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

will bet you £599 million :D :D :D

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Yup, exactly what happened to Virgin Rail. The day after the took over the franchise, complaints went up by a huge amount, purely because customers know what the brand should stand for.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

According to Wikipedia it's 15%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson

`On 4 July 2006, Branson sold his Virgin Mobile company to UK cable TV, broadband, and telephone company NTL/NTL:Telewest for almost £1 billion. As part of the sale, the company pays a minimum of £8.5 million per year to use the Virgin name and Branson became the company's largest shareholder.[citation needed] The new company was launched with much fanfare and publicity on 8 February 2007, under the name Virgin Media. The decision to merge his Virgin Media Company with NTL was in order to integrate both of the companies' compatible parts of commerce. Branson used to own three quarters of Virgin Mobile, whereas now he owns 15 percent of the new Virgin Media company.'

He should change his name to Richard `The C$sh' Branson.
:LOL: 8.5 million a year minimum for the use of the Virgin name. That's only 19142 customers on full price XL broadband per year (I think it's still £37/month for XL). NTL/Telewest should have keep the extra cash and just incorporated Virgin mobile into their company name, as they were already known as a landline supplier and adding mobile services would have been a natural progression. Then renamed to something like NTL Media

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Mmm Wikipedia is wrong on that one..

According to SEC filings Beardy was given 34,260,959 shares - there are 328.11 million shares outstanding in VM, putting Beardy's holding at 10.44%

Royal Bank of Canada also hold the exact same amount of shares.

Biggest entity holding shares in VM is Franklin, they have 4 separate holdings in VM under 4 different umbrellas.

Top Institutional Owners for Virgin Media:

No Percent Owner Name
1 10.4% ROYAL BANK OF CANADA /
2 10.0% FRANKLIN RESOURCES INC
3 9.7% AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL INC
4 5.6% WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT CO LLP
5 4.9% HARRIS ASSOCIATES L P
6 4.7% GLENVIEW CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC
7 4.5% GANDHARA ADVISORS EUROPE LLP
8 4.0% SRM FUND MANAGEMENT (CAYMAN) LTD
9 4.0% GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC
10 3.0% STATE STREET CORP
11 2.9% BARCLAYS GLOBAL INVESTORS UK HOLDINGS LTD
12 2.8% PARDUS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT L.P.
13 2.8% CAPITAL WORLD INVESTORS
14 2.7% FMR LLC
15 2.7% GLG PARTNERS, INC.
16 2.6% HUFF W R ASSET MANAGEMENT CO LLC /DE/
17 2.0% VANGUARD GROUP INC

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Can I change my vote to this should be made a sticky please :D

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

virgin own 10% of virgin media and it all got rebranded

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

HaHa you all make me laugh.

I am a relative to Richard Charles Nicholas Branson he was born back in 1950 on the 18th of July.

As an English industrialist, best known for his Virgin Brand of over 360 companies. My Uncle Richards first successful business venture was at age 16, when he published a magazine called Student.He then set up an audio record mail-order business in 1970. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores and rebranded after a management buyout as Zavvi in late 2007.

Now you may be thinking ha yeah Zavvi bought Virgin...NOPE Zavvi was in talks with Richard and they both agreed that Richard would still own Virgin Records [It's former name] and they would change the name to Zavvi as this newly started company was going bust very quickly and they needed some profit.That way the ever so gullable public now think Virgin Records does not exist ..not by name but Richard Still owns it and Zavvi Manages it hence i mentioned above that it was a management buyout!!.

Anyway

With my uncle's flamboyant and competitive style, Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s—as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.

He still owns and runs Virgin but he does all of this behind closed doors and what ever information regarding any other company owning virgin and/or buying virgin is not true.

NTL/TELEWEST do not own virgin they use the virgin media brand and logo name and pay my uncle for using the brand and logo name.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Added, and voted on. ;)

We normally like to have a don't know/don't care option in our polls anyway.

---------- Post added at 20:15 ---------- Previous post was at 20:11 ----------

Of course you are. And you know him so well you had to copy whole chunks of his Wikipedia entry to help you write your post.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He sent me a lovely letter the other day ,thanking me for my "valued custom"and hoping he could provide me with "many more years of excellant service" signed it and everything he did ;)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I have not copied chunks out of wikipedia i have mearly pointed out facts that people are underestimating why do people seem to think that he does not own Virgin ? beats me because it certainly isn't anyone else.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Post #25 by Broadbandings, based on data from the stock exchange, company registration bodies, etc.

...and we are talking about Virgin Media(used to be NTL:Telewest), not the Virgin name.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I can beat your uncle in an arm wrestle!

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

LOL. You come across as one of those Nigerian scam e-mails some of us receive from time to time!. Should I send the cheque to you or Uncle Richard?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Areet Branson-son :D

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Welcome to the forum Branson 1.

You seem to be under the impression that we do not know the history of your uncle and Virgin Media. I can assure you that most of our members do.

My apologies if I am wrong but it would appear that you are Christopher James Friggieri and have posted this before.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question...8134717AATaYyQ

and you also published this information almost word for word here :-

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/richard_branson

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Richard_Branson

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

This is an extract from the Virgin Media 2008 Annual Report (under the RISKS section):

"We are licensed to use the Virgin name and logo but do not own it. In February 2007, we rebranded certain areas of our business as Virgin Media and renamed our corporate parent Virgin Media Inc. under a 30-year license agreement with Virgin Enterprises Limited
to use the Virgin name and logo. The use of the Virgin Media name and brand carries various risks, including the following:

• we will be substantially reliant on the general goodwill of consumers towards the Virgin brand. Consequently, adverse publicity in relation to the Virgin Group or its principals, particularly Sir Richard Branson, who is closely associated with the brand, or in relation to another Virgin name licensee, could have a material adverse effect on our business;
28

• the license agreement has a 30-year term, and we are obligated to pay a termination payment if the license is terminated early under certain circumstances; and

• we are required to meet certain customer service level requirements. These service level requirements, which are grouped into three key categories, include:
(i) Base Service Levels which, in addition to ensuring that employees are fully-trained, competent, courteous and respectful, set basic standards against which to measure complaint handling, complaint levels and call center performance;

(ii) Technical Service Levels which measure certain technical requirements that affect our customers’ experience, such as service availability and service response times; and

(iii) Aspirational Service Levels, which are levels of service that we and Virgin Group wish to achieve over time, to create new service measures and increase the demands on certain existing measures, covering a range of matters including customer satisfaction, customer advocacy, complaint levels, call center performance and staff satisfaction. A failure to meet our obligations under the license agreement could lead to a termination of the license. If we lose the right to use the Virgin brand, we would need to rebrand those areas of our business that have been rebranded, which could result in increased expenditures and increased customer churn."

So now you have an attack plan for bad service.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I have obviously misunderstood the thread and i apologise but i am not any of the people named above i live in the UK and my name is Paul James Branson

when i was surfing the internet i saw a title that said Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media...i was mearly defending my uncle's position as the owner of Virgin Media because as i saw the title say what i have just mentioned i had to see why people did not think he owned/created Virgin.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

On the Virgin Media Investors ownership page (link), there is no mention of Richard Branson.

The last mention I can find of him and Virgin Media shares is in the Guardian in May 2009, where he/his holding companies reduced their shareholding to 6.5% (the deal was actually done in 2007 as part of a hedging deal).

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Uncle Richard might have created Virgin but he did not create NTL nor Telewest, now rebranded Virgin Media.

I posted the Risk Register entry a few posts back; basically if VM are sufficiently discredited so that Uncle Richard gets p*ssed off, the they would have to rebrand again.

Clearly NTL/Telewest had little confidence in the standing of their own name.

To misquote Shakespeare: "A rose by any other name still smells the same"! What did poor old Uncle Richard get his brand name into?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I seem to remember Branson is paid something like 1% of profit, or 10million pound which ever is greater for the duration of the contract for the use of the Virgin name, though i did believe it was for only 10 years

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Personally i don't see why it should be assumed that the majority of everyday folk would be as clued up as certain members of this board.

After all, NTL / Telewest were kind of counting on people not being that well informed, why else would they stump up so much cash to use the Virgin brand in the first place?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

A year later and you decide to add an option? :D

---------- Post added at 21:31 ---------- Previous post was at 21:28 ----------

Some people say that Richard's got a strong right arm.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

The last mention I saw about his shares in VM was this in May

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/10...l#post34797590

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Still 6.5% according to this

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/r...007260.article

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

He has to change arms at 99. LOL.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

It was like an itch. Sometimes you just have to scratch ...

I understand asymmetrical muscle development can be a problem for some people.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

What a pointless thread, and someone resurrects it!! Still pointless, imo

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Well back to the point, Why on earth did NTL acquire Telewest and Virgin Mobile, it should have been the other way round, Telewest was much better under its own brand name and ownership.

As soon as NTL took over the whole lot, in came the indian call centres,job losses,less channels and annoying packages oh and slow development of products.

To be honest NTL,Cable and Wireless and especially Videotron are the worst people to deal with.

Cable and wireless have bounced in and out of the residential sector so many times and always seem to cause some kind of issue whether its poor customer relations,poor billing and pricing or just in general crap service.

What gets me is, I heard that NTL Telewest are paying Virgin Enterprises £25 Million per year on top, surely that money could go to upgrading Analogue only areas such as Westminster?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Well I might aswell indulge as I'm on my lunch break. From memory.

NTL acquired Telewest, however on paper on the wheeler dealer side of things, I'm pretty sure the deal shows that Telewest acquired NTL and operationally it more of amerger than any one company taking over. In many areas of the business Telewest working practices and procedures were adopted, as were NTL ones in Telewest areas. Many top jobs went to Telewest management.

So to say that NTL "took over" Telewest in not accurate.

It was then the joint NTL:Telewest company that acquired Virgin Mobile and then we rebranded to Virgin Media many months later. Only after the company had met several pre-conditions laid down by Branson would he lease the brand.

Virgin Media, is very much a Virgin Company, it is the largest Virgin branded company by some way. It may not be wholly owned by Branson (few of Virgin companies are) but he is still a major shareholder who has great influence.

Virgin values and behaviours have been rammed down the employees ever since the re-brand.

Purely your opinion and of no value in the discussion, for every person who thought it was better as TW you'l find someone who thinks it was better as NTL.

Actually before the merger TW had gone through a major reduction in workforce. Post merger there was a lot of redundancies on the NTL side. Working practices of TW were adopted as they had already been rationalised and were deemed by the new management as to have been successful in their reductions.

Apart from when they had their own cable franchises, that ntl bought, and their Bulldog Broadband. I'm not aware of any forays into the residential sector? can you expand.

Westminster is actually a very small franchise area. From a business point of view £25M to acquire one of the worlds leading brands is money well spent.

Like I say, there was no need to respond to this as it's been said before, but what the hell.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

The thing is, a *lot* of people liked Telewest. As with NTL, actually. Telewest wasn't perfect (in fact I've heard some horror stories, such as Telewest not upgrading whole areas). Neither company was perfect. The only reason that more telewest customers didn't come forward with problems is simply that for a long time we didn't state that we covered telewest as well (and the site's name, nthellword, certainly didn't help in that respect), and, while I doubt we'd have turned away a telewest customer asking for help, once the merger started, it took a while for word to get around to telewest customers that we existed.

It's worth noting that then NTL management were looking at a PVR that was capable of MPEG4, something which, several years later. the current management have just started rolling out. The largely Telewest managed VM decided to go for MPEG2 (although I accept they probably had good reason for this).

That's just it... The management went for something they *thought* would improve their image, and generate sales. I don't know if it did, but in our image-conscious world, a good name can increase sales far more than technically advanced services. That £25 million could have upgraded one area, which might have got a few extra customers ,or it could buy the rights to use an internationally recognised name that might bring in £100 million in sales..

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxKe...om=PL&index=47

Richard Branson featuring in Mercury Communications ad, his first step in the telecoms business?

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Nope, just an ad.

For Mercury which is now Cable & Wireless, One of Virgins main wholesale competitors.

Funny how times change

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Ex-ntl had more seats on the board than ex-TW. The TV Drive was chosen for cost reasons.

---------- Post added at 17:08 ---------- Previous post was at 17:07 ----------

Telewest needed someone to pay for all the network upgrades they had avoided doing for the previous years.

---------- Post added at 17:16 ---------- Previous post was at 17:08 ----------

Quick couple of snippets:

The seriously big decisions would have been all ntl.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

I already knew he didn't and at the same time, I couldn't give a smeg. :)

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Strategic ones on the main "board", i.e. at the "Huff" level - yes.

But from CEO down to MD and Divisional Director Level, at the operational level, the split was far from so ntl heavy. It is this level I am talking about. At this level TW senior management was very well represented.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

True that - anyone noting the change in capacity planning on the DOCSIS network would have seen it :D

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

Mercury's 131 and 132 service was joined with the merger of Nynex,Videotron,BellCable Media and Cable and Wireless and then when the sale of the residential arm including Cable franchises which also included businesses using the cable franchises was sold to NTL, the residential 131/132 service also went across to NTL.

NTL kept it for a short while and then sold it off to Npower for £7 Million, shortly after, Tiscali acquired Npower's telephone base and was called Tiscali Smart Talk, Tiscali is now owned by TalkTalk, So the amount of hands that customer base has gone through since the late 80's is incredible!

Between 1986 and 2009, Mercury's operations:

Mercury Residential: Acquired by NTL in 2000
Mercury Paging: Demerged in 1997 (Now PageOne)
Mercury One2One: Rebranded 1997 Acquired by Deutsche Telekom 1999
Mercury Payphones:Sites Acquired by IPM/Interphone/Infolines 1995/2000

Virgin Media and Cable and Wireless to this date maybe slight competitors but they still do work together, in terms of sharing LLU network. Cable and Wireless still provide Operator Assistance,International Operator Assistance and Emergency Services as well non-Emergencies via 101 to Virgin Media lines and T-Mobile/Virgin Mobile phones. Probably a long term contract.

And who's to say Cable and Wireless will never take over Virgin Media again, it would make sense in terms of cost reduction.

Re: Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.
 

This whole thread, my contribution included, is a load of iseless b*llox!