Well cash IS desparately needed and getting a better price could take more than a decade.

Quote ="tb"Satire gets it right again: www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/busi ... ne-to-use-£747m-from-northern-rock-sale-to-bail-out-new-owners-201111174558'" "Julian Cook, chief economist at Donnelly McPartlin said: "I know that having George Osborne in charge of the money makes for great conversation, but eventually we are going to have to take this seriously."

Quote ="tb"Satire gets it right again: www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/busi ... ne-to-use-£747m-from-northern-rock-sale-to-bail-out-new-owners-201111174558'" "Julian Cook, chief economist at Donnelly McPartlin said: "I know that having George Osborne in charge of the money makes for great conversation, but eventually we are going to have to take this seriously."

Mmm a flogging off gold reserves type situation.

So then why sell now?
Poop has hit the fan perhaps?

An equally potty idea and I said so at the time.

Or flogging Britoil.

What did those Norwegians think they were doing, holding on to Statoil? After all, all the dopey buggers have done with it is used it to fund the Norwegian pension fund. They could've flogged it off too and let their mates pis the proceeds against the wall

Do not forget this is the "good" part of the bank with all the toxic debt removed. That is why Virgin Money have bought it.

Virgin Money intend to float the bank on the stock market within two to five years. When they do they will expect to make money on that transaction meaning they will and the taxpayer won't.

If Virgin are going to do that this confirms that our idiot of a Chancellor could have held onto the bank and done the same thing and the sale would then be for our benefit as tax payers not Virgin Money's.

He has clearly sold the taxpayer short so he can try and meet his politically inspired target of deficit reduction before 2015 (which looks ever more unlikely by the day) so this is a prime example of short term idiot thinking that not only sells the taxpayer short now but hands a profit to Virgin Money in a few years we the taxpayer should have got.

Virgin have bought this to sell it so they clearly think money is to be made on the deal. Money Osborne has ensured will go to a company rather than into the public coffers.

I was going to say this shows his incompetence but in actual fact it is typically Tory letting his City mates make a profit at the ordinary persons expense.

This may not be the best time to sell, but it will not be possible to sell all of the nationalised banks at the optimum time. The amounts involved are so big, dwarfing the total of all previous privatisations, that the sales will have to be staggered over many years. The biggest tranches do need to be sold at a better time, but the smaller banks will be sold when market conditions are not necessarily ideal. If NR isnt sold now it almost certainly will not be sold in a couple of years time if conditions are better, because that's when tranches of RBS or Lloyds will be sold.

I have no idea whether Virgin are paying the right place, but the mere fact that NR is being sold at a loss is largely irrelevant, its spilt milk. The issue is whether Virgin or anyone else would be willing to pay more.

you are assuming that the UK Government would add the same amount of value to the bank as Virgin Money will do over the next few years. Doe the UK Government not have better things to be doing than running a retail bank anyway...?

Abso-bloomin-lutley.
Well said.

But what if you need the money? The government does, because the last government p155ed everything up the wall.

Not that one again

Mate, covering your eyes and pretending something you don't like is not there only works when you're a baby.

Check again.
Compare against the debt left by the government before that, the blue one.

Would that be a baby who can't read or understand figures from before the financial crash and figures from the government before May 1997?

Or one who is so blinded by ideology that they keep hoping that if they just keep claiming that black is white and visa versa it'll be so?

[url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a955536-1215-11e1-8ab1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1eA4nZYDLOh aye, a really good deal[/url (registration required)

Our beloved Gideon must have just 'Forgotten' to mention that when he said what a great deal it was.

Jebus wept!

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8900863/Virgin-Money-used-Northern-Rock-cash-to-fund-deal.htmlNo subscription required[/url

People are saying banks are in a terrible position and the government did a wonderful deal to get £700+ million, so why are the bonuses for bankers this year over £4 billion then?

Let me get this straight, this is like buying a house with an acre of land attached, but before the contracts even signed you tell the seller that you can only afford to pay for the house and land if you sell the land first and use that money to pay the seller ?

There is something brilliantly corrupt about the whole thing that makes you think of a serpent swallowing its own tail.

Even Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask...

A nearer analogy is that we sold a house – which happened to have a safe in it, containing money – and the buyer is paying us (in part admittedly) with the money in the safe (the money that was ours, until we sold the house)

...or,

You buy something and pay 100% of the price by using 33% of the asset to pay for itself, leaving you with only 66%, and then you think you've got a bargain ?

Not only that but the seller thinks they got a bargain too because until they sold it to you they owned 200% of it.

I haven't just fallen down a rabbit hole have I ?

I'd be interested to see what exactly has been left on the Government balance sheet in this. Given that NRs main problem was its funding structure rather than its assets, I wouldn't have thought what the Government has been left with is actually that bad quality.

Anyway, if nothing else hopefully this is the start of increased competition in retail banking. I was in the Bank of England Museum the other day and it's frankly embarrassing how little has changed in retail banking in over 400 years. Most retail banking, on the customer facing side at least, is still stuck in the 90s and we need some innovation and competition to bring it kicking and screaming in to the 21st century. Branson is the sort of guy who might be able to kick start that.

Good luck to Osborne if he thinks he can now start getting out of his Lloyds and RBS positions anyway. He'll make some impressive losses closing those out if he tries.