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Informed opinions on the state of play in the UK Broadband market

Virgin approached and offered a nine-figure sum

Virgin Media have confirmed it has received a takeover approach and that it is considering a potential sale. It has not yet been revealed who the potential buyer is, but all fingers are pointing at private equity group Carlyle, who also own the US cable network Insight.

The private equity firm is understood to have made an offer of more than £5.5 billion for the cable group which is said to be keen on the idea of a takeover, which would certainly provide the firm with a larger spending budget for the up and coming Virgin 1 channel.

Despite recent promising figures, Virgin Media’s first year of operations has been less than stellar. The loss of Sky channels saw massive customer migration which was exacerbated by changes such as bandwidth throttling in busy areas and the introduction of premium rate charges for technical support helplines.

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Posted by Tom on July 3rd 2007 in Broadband, Sky Broadband, Virgin Media

7 Responses to “Virgin approached and offered a nine-figure sum”

  1. Tom Cruising said on 03 Jul 2007 at 9:25 am #

    How many takeovers has it been now?!!

    All the other news feeds I’ve read about this have been talking about share prices, so this means bugger all for the consumer and golden handshakes for a select few board members; the customers will be stuck with the same service.

    Meh.

  2. Jonathan Faherty said on 03 Jul 2007 at 1:12 pm #

    Can Sky buy them out and have total domination of the world???

  3. Steve said on 03 Jul 2007 at 1:34 pm #

    All the buy outs are probably due to Sky’s domination, they just don’t seem to be able to compete.

  4. Tom Cruising said on 03 Jul 2007 at 2:25 pm #

    If Tiscali can afford the carriage fees for Sky’s premium channels then Virgin certainly can.

    The Tiscali/Sky deal exposed just how penny pinching Branson’s lot are.

  5. Ollie said on 03 Jul 2007 at 2:27 pm #

    I don’t think that they are penny pinching, is he not a major shareholder in the company that is goin to buy them out???

  6. Steve said on 03 Jul 2007 at 2:29 pm #

    Regarding Virgin, it wasn’t about whether they could afford the fees or not, it was about the fact Sky raised them so much as soon as Virgin took over.

  7. Tom Cruising said on 03 Jul 2007 at 2:38 pm #

    Well, we don’t know what company is going to be buying out Virgin yet, so that’s conjecture for now at least.

    As for Sky raising the fees, well that’s business I suppose. They are the top dog in the pay-TV market, have been for years and aren’t going to be pushed around without pushing back.

    I suppose it’s hard to say what will happen in six months time in light of all the court proceedings though.


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