Virgin fairy dust

Sir Richard Branson says he’s not the right person to decide whether the sale terms of Virgin Mobile are fair for minority investors. That may be true. But has he done a smart deal for himself? The answer is that he may have done. But it still looks pretty risky. Branson is forgoing a lot of value to sell Virgin Mobile to NTL. He is swapping his 72% stake in the operator for a stake in the enlarged cable group worth about £600m. Yet if he sold Virgin Mobile to the highest bidder it might fetch...