P2P Lending News » Management http://www.p2plendingnews.com Staying on top of the person to person lending revolution Sun, 02 May 2010 02:30:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Asheesh Advani Steps Out of Virgin Money – Or Was He Pushed Out? http://www.p2plendingnews.com/2009/07/asheesh-advani-leaving-virgin-money/ http://www.p2plendingnews.com/2009/07/asheesh-advani-leaving-virgin-money/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:56:36 +0000 P2P Lending News http://www.p2plendingnews.com/?p=280
  • Virgin Money Letting US Business Fade Away
  • Virgin USA acquires CircleLending, enters US banking market
  • Be Employee Number 3-6 at Loanio; They’re Hiring
    • ]]>     Richard Branson Go Fund Yourself T-ShirtBefore 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.


    Asheesh AdvaniNow 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

    Related posts:

    1. Virgin Money Letting US Business Fade Away
    2. Virgin USA acquires CircleLending, enters US banking market
    3. Be Employee Number 3-6 at Loanio; They’re Hiring

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