Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.

[Arthurgray50@blu]

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,

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

say 600million quid,

Want to make a bet of that

[handyman]

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

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

this is the reason why, VM (have already said) would sell the TV side, if the price was right, say 600million quid,

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?

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu

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,

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?

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

[on in an hour!]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Want to make a bet of that

will bet you £599 million

[Toto]

Originally Posted by Toto

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?

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.

[Noggo]

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.
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

[Ignitionnet]

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

[TheDaddy]

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

[klegg]

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

[Branson 1]

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.

Originally Posted by Thomas T

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.

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 ----------

Originally Posted by Branson 1

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

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.

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