Westpac drags Virgin out of the red
Virgin Money is putting the final payments from Westpac for the hire of the former's name for co-branded credit card to pay down debts owed to shareholders and to reinvest in the business.Westpac may continue to use the Virgin Money brand for the credit card (which is no longer being marketed) until 1 June 2009. Westpac paid Virgin $39 million for this right and to bring the commercial ties between the two to an end.The Westpac payment will help clean up the Virgin Money balance sheet.Financial statements for Virgin Money Australia for the year to March 2008 show that the company has run up accumulated losses of $31 million and a deficiency in net assets of $25 million in the five years since the private equity firm's initial effort to crack Australia's financial services market.Virgin Money is 90 per cent owned by Virgin Money Overseas and 10 per cent by Macquarie Bank. The bank provided a working capital line of $56 million that was drawn to $44 million at March.The financial statements show a loss of $19.5 million in the year to March 2008 compared with a loss of $3.3 million in 2007.The timing of Virgin Money's entry into the home loan market in Australia - only a year or so before the credit crunch hit - meant that the hoped for growth in revenues from residential lending did not materialise. Virgin Money ceased originating home loans earlier this year but hopes to resume lending once credit markets settle.Virgin received $7.7 million in bounty revenue from Westpac in the year to March 2008, down from $27.7 million in the prior year.