Virgin buys Northern Rock

Days ago I passed close to a London branch of the Northern Rock bank and I wondered what had happened to the English bank after the famous events of 2007. Everyone  remembers Northern Rock (as well as a sponsor of the football club Newcastle United) as one that saw a crowd of savers queuing to withdraw their deposits (at the end, before the intervention of the government to guarantee all deposits, were taken by 2 billion pounds) as a result of the financial problems of the institute, which specializes in mortgages, culminating in the nationalization in February 2008 by the British Government.
And now my curiosity has been heard by the news that the bank was acquired by Virgin Money, the financial arm of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
Exactly the company sold is the Northern Rock Plc, the "good bank" containing, as a result of the division took place in January 2010, retail deposits and loans at lower risk, while the "bad bank" Northern Rock Asset Management (which includes mortgages less secure)  remains owned by the Government.
The agreement is made on the basis of little more than 1 billion pounds, of which 747 million cash. It believes that a lot of money comes from American billionaire Wilbur Ross, a friend and business colleague of Branson.
Virgin Money acquires 75 branches of the Northern Rock (with about 1 million customers amounted to 16.7 billion pounds of retail deposits), making a big jump in retail banking. Virgin Money is specialized in online financial services, with 3 million customers (especially credit cards to Virgin brand). Do not plan to open other branches and it will continue to prefer online customers, with the goal of making the two complementary types of activities and thus create a large bank with 4 million customers. In this respect it will be  possible to allocate 45 billion pounds in mortgages and loans over the next 5 years.
The Virgin then enters in the traditional banking. Gone are the days when Richard Branson was known as the owner of record label Virgin Records (now owned by EMI).
Now is a group that spans many fields of economy and commerce, among which can be identified:
- Air travel with "Virgin Atlantic" which holds a good part of the market share of flights departing from London (in Italy does not fly and therefore is not widely known);
- Media with "Virgin Media", which offers (especially in the UK) telephony, cable TV and broadband Internet connection;
- Sale of CDs, DVDs and video games with "Virgin Megastore";
- "Virgin Active" fitness;
- Rail travel with the "Virgin Trains";
- Radio stations;
and various other activities. For the British Government is not a big deal, because the bailout of the bank had planned to release 1.4 billion pounds. But I believe that the agreement can be satisfactory for both the buyer and the seller. London is removed from the rump a company which in 2010 had ended the year with pre-tax loss of 223.5 million pounds; Virgin can enter the world of mortgages and current accounts by exploiting the great potential of 3 million online customers acquired with financial services. The concern that pervades the people of Newcastle and the north-east England, where Northern Rock is the bank of local interests, is that the only one that comes out with broken bones may be just the Northern Rock, with the prospect of losing the name on the branches replaced by the buyer (and, open up the sky, the naming rights to the stadium of Newcastle and sponsorship on their shirts, with supporters among the most passionate and warm of the United Kingdom) for, as a local political representative  says with pride, "a financial crisis caused by a banking model wrong, that certainly was not invented in Newcastle."