Virgin of the north

Sir Richard Branson has a huge appetite for risk, as he displayed when he bungee-jumped off a Las Vegas hotel tower earlier this week. But is the daredevil entrepreneur’s plan to rescue Northern Rock an act of bravado too far? It’s easy to see why he’s interested. But it will take more than slick rebranding to pull the stricken UK mortgage lender out of the mire. Certainly, Branson can repeat some of the tricks he used at NTL, the UK cable group that he merged last year with his Virgin Mobile t...