Branson's V2 records £10m loss

SIR Richard Branson's music empire is still heavily in the red, despite promoting some of Britain's most successful bands.

The band Stereophonics, a mainstay of his V2 Music label, sold 575,000 copies of the album You've Got To Go There To Come Back, but the company still showed a loss of nearly £10 million on sales of £53 million, according to accounts just filed.

That came on top of a whopping £48 million loss the previous year and despite a £24 million support package from Branson's financial arm, Ivanco, and investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which owns 47.25% of V2.

Director Antony Harlow, who signed the accounts for the year up to last June, was upbeat about the company's prospects.

He reported that V2 produced a near-million selling album by The White Stripes and a half-million seller by Liberty X.