Virgin Money Denies it Plans to List its Business

British financial group Virgin Money, which is backed by billionaire businessman Richard Branson, has announced that it has no immediate plans to list its business.

This follows heightened speculation of an imminent stock market listing. Reports attributed to Sky news in mid last year had intimated that Virgin Money would in the coming weeks begin the process of appointing advisers to work on an initial public offering (IPO) of the business

Jayne-Anne Gadhia, said the bank has appointed the probable advisers for its listing. The bank today early reported its first profit since the beginning of 2012 when it acquired the state-controlled Northern Rock in a takeover.

“We have no specific plans for an IPO at the moment. It remains our long term intention to float the business…but we haven’t appointed bankers yet. We know that’s something we need to do when the market’s ready but that’s not planned yet,” Gadhia told Reuters in an interview.

In 2012 the lender posted a loss of 2.5 million pounds. This was attributed to constraints from the takeover of the ailing Northern Rock in January of that year. The lender had paid nearly £750m to buy Northern Rock from the Government

We can just never compete,” said Gadhia, according to the Guardian. She argued that it was difficult to compete with the top four lenders which hold the largest share of the current account market as they “don’t pay any interest on deposits”

The lender has however turned tables by registering an underlying full-year profit of 53.4 million pounds ($89.27 million) for 2013, up from a loss of 2.5 million pounds a year earlier.