Northern Rock

[meglet]

Olivant has pulled out of a potential takeover of Northern Rock which just leaves Branson and the NR management. Seeing as the management must have played a role in the company ending up in the situation it is in, will Branson surely get it? My experience in dealing with any of the Virgin companies is that they are considered a poor risk by the finance houses who won't give them credit as there is never much cash actually held in the businesses themselves.

So why not nationalise it? Do you think the British public would actually prefer to use a nationalised back to put money into government coffers rather than shareholders?

[jno]

the government is very keen not to nationalise anything because they think it will remind people of the heyday of British Leyland (etc) and its appalling labour relations and drain on the public purse. The top people have already left Northern Crock, I believe, so hopefully the management bid would be led by more astute ones.

[Avatar]

AFAIR it wasnt the management that doomed NR, it was the media, reporting on a perfectly normal financial procedure of borrowing off the bank of england much as all the other major banks also do regularly. Which seems not to have been reported as widely.