History
Virgin Mobile was launched in November 1999 as a private joint venture between One2One (later T-Mobile) and the Virgin Group. The joint venture involved leasing network bandwidth from One2One and re-selling it under the Virgin Mobile brand, making it significantly cheaper to run than if Virgin operated its own network infrastructure.
The company reported its first annual profit in 2003, following successful Christmas sales.
In 2004 Deutsche Telekom sold their 50% holding in Virgin Mobile to the Virgin Group, with the agreement that if the company were to become public in the following two and a half years they would receive 25% of the proceeds. The two companies had previously argued over the terms of the agreement made in 1999 and Richard Branson had filed a High Court action against T-Mobile.
Richard Branson had considered making Virgin Mobile public in 2002. Eventually dealing in shares of Virgin Mobile began on 21 July 2004, with 37% of the companies made available for sale as an initial public offering. The remaining shares were held by the Virgin Group. At the time the company had 4.1 million customers, employed 1,400 staff in the UK and the listing valued the company at £500m.
Read more about this topic: Virgin Mobile UK
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