Asheesh Advani Steps Out of Virgin Money – Or Was He Pushed Out?
Before Richard Branson decided that P2P loans were the cola of the new millennium, Asheesh Advani was an entrepreneur who wanted to make it easier for people to borrow money from their friends and family. After a stint at the World Bank, he wondered if he could improve direct lending between individuals, and launched CircleLending in 2001. Just six years later in 2007, CircleLending was purchased by the Virgin Group and named Virgin Money; Richard Branson wore a t-shirt that said “Go Fund Yourself” to the launch party in Boston.
Now it may be Advani who is funding himself (or getting, uh, funded), as his title shows a demotion from “CEO and Founder” to simply “President” in recent articles. He’s been completely removed from Virgin Money’s management page, and no replacement CEO has been added. Advani’s LinkedIn profile shows him as “President and CEO”, but self-managed LinkedIn profiles may not be the most reliable source of information.
So what’s going on over at Virgin Money? Of the original management team at Virgin Money (Oct 2007), only Dan Narahara remains (upgraded from VP of Technology to CTO). Has the pre-acquisition management team retired to a beach in the tropics, or has there been a conflict of strategy (or just a conflict?) at the friends and family lending site? A spokesman for Virgin Money offered the following statement:
Asheesh Advani has moved on to other opportunities outside of the Virgin Group having concluded that his skills and knowledge are best deployed in a start-up. We will be recruiting a new CEO to lead Virgin Money USA in its next phase of growth.
We wish Advani the best of luck in whatever’s next, and look forward to seeing what Virgin Money does with their next chief executive.
Photo credits: Richard Branson in Fortune Small Business, Asheesh Advani in The New York Times
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This is a guy who hadn’t learned that having personal non work related dealings with female employees is not cool.
Further I hope he has taken as an object lesson what can happen when a leader targets a Black employee for termination when the employee’s only crime was to stand up for himself in a private conversation with Asheesh.
This goes to show that every whiz kid is not cut out to lead people and organizations.
Carl – your statement is very incendiary. Can you actually back up any of your assertions?
I don’t know about targeting a Black employee but I can tell you the rest is true having worked at Virgin for many years. Asheesh is just not a leader, he can’t relate to employees and thinks he is smarter than everyone else.
He should not be a management role but in a support function.
These comments sound like sour grapes to me. I’ve know Asheesh for some time and those allegations are crazy. Easy to start rumors while sitting anonymously behind your computer screen.
Mike, come on if you know Asheesh he wasn’t great running a company. I’d debate you all day on this the guy is a clown.
Word in the mortgage industry is spreading like wild-fire that Virgin Money, USA is on death’s door-step. Mortgage GM Greg O’Conner is shopping the business like crazy with little to no interest. The social lending side of the business is all smoke and mirrors anyway. From what I’ve heard, Advani was replaced by a big-shot from London who’s desperately trying to save the business and protect the brand from a huge failure. Look for Virgin to sell off what little they have, or simply dissolve in the next few weeks.
What did I tell you P2P Lending News??? You really ned to break this story, because nobody else seems to be paying attention! Check out Virgin Money’s website! (1) They are no longer offering institutional mortgages. Former VM Mortgage GM Greg O’Conner bought back the mortgage business, now called Clear Point Funding. (2) Virgin Money has eliminated all P2P private mortgage mortgage programs (their only unique product, really.) (3) Virgin Money has eliminated all loan servicing on new P2P loans, including credit reporting. (4) Virgin Money is now outsourcing the loan servicing on existing accounts to another company. (5) Virgin Money recentley laid off 80% of their staff and removed the sign from their posh office space in Boston. (6) Try calling their customer service reps and see what kind of strange answers you get from them! You run a great site! Check this out for yourself and break the story!!!
Much of the stuff written above is totally ridiculous. Virgin Money went through a global restructuring a year ago. Branson announced he wants to enter the banking business and build an online bank. Type “virgin money uk” into Google News and you will see many articles on this. Three of the four Virgin Money CEOs left as part of the restructuring, including Advani in the US, the guy in the UK, and the guy in Australia. As anyone who’s actually worked at the company would know, there was no sexism, no racism, no demotion – as some of the rumor-mongering on this site claims. This probably also shows why Virgin sold the mortgage biz, and why they are keeping the online social lending products, not the mortgage ones that don’t fit online banking.
There was total mismanagement of the company and to say it was just restructuring is a joke. Virgin invested over 50 million and has nothing to show for it. They were asleep at the wheel thinking social lending was a billion dollar business and then let Advani invest in the mortgage business at a time the industry was in shambles. Anyway you cut it Virgin Money USA is a failure.