Allen joins Virgin Media board as ITV takeover gossip mounts

Charles Allen, the former chief executive of ITV, set tongues wagging in the City yesterday with a move on to the board of Virgin Media that completes the set of possible bidders for his beleaguered former company.

Mr Allen's appointment as a non-executive director at the cable television and internet group is his second in a week, coming hot on the heels of his selection for a similar role at Endemol, the production company responsible for, amongst other things, the Big Brother reality series.

Mr Allen resigned from ITV just months before NTL – the cable group which would soon after become Virgin Media – made an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the broadcaster in 2006.

Mr Allen's appointment to two boards – one of a distributor and one a producer – had the gossips predicting that ITV would be taken over, and split up between Virgin and Endemol, almost as soon as the announcement of the appointment was released yesterday.

ITV is certainly a takeover target. Its share price has dropped by 58 per cent in the past 12 months, fuelling repeated speculation that has put Endemol, NBC and RTL all in the frame.

Despite a 6.55 per cent rise yesterday on the back of speculation about interest from MediaSet, the Italian group controlled by the Berlusconi family, ITV's shares are still languishing at just 48.8p, and it was the much-predicted end of an era yesterday when the company was kicked out of the FTSE 100.

Nothing can happen in the short term, however, because ITV is still awaiting the outcome of BSkyB's appeal against the Competition Commission ruling that it must sell down its 17.9 per cent stake in the company.

Virgin Media has also appointed John Rigsby, a former executive at Time Warner, to a second non-executive board position.

Jim Mooney, Virgin Media's chairman, said: "With the appointment of Charles and John to our board, we have added further world-class experience and expertise to our team.

"Charles brings unrivalled experience in the UK media sector from his 15 years leading the UK's key commercial broadcast companies and John brings extensive experience from both the telecoms and cable sectors."