Virgin Money buys into retail banking
Posted on | January 13, 2010 | Comments Off
Richard Branson’s Virgin Money is set to enter Britain’s retail banking market, spending 50 million pounds on a tiny provincial bank with the licence needed to sell savings and mortgage products.The consumer credit arm of Branson’s Virgin Group said on Friday it had agreed to buy Church House Trust in a deal that values the bank, based in the west of England, at about 12.28 million pounds.
Virgin will inject an additional 37.3 million pounds of new capital into Church House, a private bank founded in 1978 by a West Country family of solicitors with ties to the banking industry that go back to 1792.
Britain’s Financial Services Authority (FSA), which assesses the fitness of anybody buying a bank and can block such deals, has approved Virgin’s application to become the controlling shareholder Church House, Virgin Money said.
Branson, who is Britain’s 32nd richest person with an estimated fortune of 1.2 billion pounds according to the Sunday Times 2009 Rich List, has made no secret of his wish to find a springboard to launch him into Britain’s banking sector and capitalise on the woes of a badly shaken industry.