UK - Blackstone in tallks with Branson for Northern Rock

The sale process of the bank began last week when the UK Government formally completed the separation of the business into a "good bank" and a "bad bank", which is named Northern Rock Asset Management and contains toxic assets as well as the bank's £350m pension scheme.

The newly sperated Northern Rock has £19bn of savings, £10bn of quality mortgages and 76 branches. In 2007, Virgin teamed up with AIG, hedge fund Toscafund and First Eastern Investment to make a £1.5bn bid for the bank before the government decided to nationilise it.

Branson is keen to get into the UK mortgages and savings market. Earlier this month, Virgin bought Church-House Trust bank for £12.3m, giving the investment vehicle a full banking licence.

Other potential buyers for the bank include National Australia Bank and Spain's Santander.

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• Topics
• Buyout
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• UK / Ireland