By Tim Ferguson, 2 July 2007 16:11
NEWS
Virgin Media has received a takeover bid from private equity organisation, the Carlyle Group, it was revealed today.
However, the company said it is not in negotiations regarding the offer to buy 100 per cent of its common stock.
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Virgin Media recently initiated a review of strategic options with Goldman Sachs, which included a possible sale of the business.
The offer from the Carlyle Group will be taken into account during the review but Virgin Media would not say if a sale was likely or what the value could be.
Press reports estimate the bid is in the region of £5bn.
The Carlyle Group would not comment on the speculation.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. James Button
Customer base 'good will' won't get them much in a sale.
Customer service has gone west, or is that South and East.
(Do I, should I, really need to disable the firewall and anti-virus facility to get my email.)
And - can I really afford their charges to me for telling them that their system has a problem (such as my broadband connection has stopped working.)
Their broadband service is overpriced unless you add in the cost of a good news server facility. And if you try to make fairly full use of the bandwidth you paid for you get capped.
But they don't seem have a good news server facility any more, well certainly not available to subscribers.
In fact I haven't had as good a service since they closed down access to their technicians testing facility.
2. Matt H
Dare I say it, but the level of service I received from NTL prior to the Virgin takeover was miles better! Since the re-branding, the Digital TV service has been the pitts... OnDemand has steadily become WhenItCanBeArsed, spewing out random error messages whenever I try to watch a program.
The only thing that still works as it should is the Telephone... I test that regularly when complaining to Customer Dis-Services about the crap service I'm receiving whilst being charged for the privilege!
3. Jeremy Wickins
Can anyone recommend other suppliers of broadband, phone and TV that aren't Sky? I like to be loyal, but I'm looking at options for change. I was one of the fortunate folks to be a Telewest customer for several years before the tak-over. Okay, I had to have engineers out about once every six months to sort out lost broadband/TV/phone connection (usually one at a time), but the staff were always helpful and efficient - nothing seemed too much trouble. I was a little concerned that whenever there was a local power cut, the phone service went down (a faulty back-up power supply in a local node that never seened to get fixed), but I was reasonably happy. Now the phone and broadband seem okay, but the TV service is really poor - the box reboots for no observable reason, the TV guide is off more than it is on, and so on. Customer service is poor, and now I'll have to pay for reporting problems that will not be my fault! At least there should be a waiver of the phone charge if it turns out to be a genuine problem with the service, but if that option exists, it isn't in the e-mail I got from Virgin the other day.