PR Week Echo Columns

Another publicity stunt or a serious move into the high street banking business? These were the two ends of the spectrum of comment on Sir Richard Branson's move to take over the ailing Northern Rock bank. Headline writers revelled in the chance to combine the two names: "Virgin Rocker" was the Dow Jones newswire offering (12 Oct). Initially, Branson was the face of the "heavy-hitting consortium" (as he described it), but the weekend saw an appearance by Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Virgin Money's chief executive, on Radio Five Live's Weekend Business programme, telling presenter Jeff Randall that "the Northern Rock brand is dead and the management tainted" (BBC,14 Oct).

The Virgin brand still carries populist support, but analysts were quick to mention that the Group has had as many business failures as successes, pointing to the merger with NTL as a prime example, and calling the Rock rescue bid Branson's "most audacious gamble yet" (James Harding, The Times,13 Oct). Despite the initial enthusiasm for the Branson solution and his "deep-pocketed backers", questions remained about his ability to find the billions needed to keep funding the bank's mortgages, and chief executive Gadhia's "greatest ever baptism of fire in the field of investor relations" (FT, 12 October).