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Virgin Sellout?

The BBC reported this story today. Private equity (the current demon figures in the UK economy at present) company Carlyle are bidding for Virgin Media. They're valuing it at £5 billion. But there is one interesting angle...

...Sir Richard Branson is reportedly keen to stay on board as a shareholder. In my opinion Carlyle (or whoever actually buys the company) would have to include the value of Bransons personal brand in the bid price. The difficulty of course is in putting a value on this in the first place.

One further point - the dispute between Sky and Virgin (over the price of Sky content delivered to Virgins customers on their channel) shows that buyers aren't solely motivated by the current content owned or licensed by Virgin, but mainly in their user base. I would assume that more bidders will enter the ring shortly - watch this space.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 2, 2007 10:32 AM.

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