Steve Burch, the chief executive of troubled UK cable monopoly Virgin Media, surprised industry watchers today by quitting the firm for "family and personal reasons".

The company said it would soon begin a search for a permanent replacement. In the meantime chief operating officer Neil Berkett will take the reins.

Burch assumed control of NTL in January 2006 and oversaw the merger with Telewest and subsequent rebranding as Virgin Media. The integration of Virgin Mobile created the first quadruple-play communications operator, but has so far failed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/08/virgin_q2_2007/) to attract many new punters.

Instead, Virgin has been embroiled in a public relations and legal battle with Sky since February this year over the price of the Murdoch TV channels.

Behind the scenes, investors became frustrated with the lack of progress on several fronts and demanded a private equity (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/13/virgin_strategic_buyer/) sellout, which later had to be put on hold because of the current economic climate.

There's a statement here (http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=205406&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1042275&highlight=). ®

Related stories

Virgin Media eases off bandwidth throttling (10 December 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/10/virgin_media_throttling_update/
Virgin Media strategy boutique boss quits (28 November 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/28/virgin_strategy_chief_bye/
Virgin Media stops the rot (7 November 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/07/virgin_media_results/
Virgin Media pins hopes on the broadband donkey (22 October 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/virgin_media_berkett/
Premium rate Virgin Media cuts tech support jobs (11 September 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/11/virgin_support_redundancies/
Virgin Media to mount French invasion (13 August 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/13/virgin_france_expansion/
Customer exodus hits Virgin Media (8 August 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/08/virgin_q2_2007/
Virgin Media seeks sanctuary in telco buyer (13 July 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/13/virgin_strategic_buyer/
Virgin: Take the money and run, Beardie (3 July 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/03/caryle_virgin_media_analysis/
Virgin Media mulls takeover approach (2 July 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/virgin_media_pe/
Virgin Media tech support goes premium rate (11 June 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/11/virgin_media_call_charges/
Virgin Media still claiming no usage limits (22 May 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/22/virginmedia_claims_no_usage_limits/
Virgin Media piles Cable and Wireless sandbags (18 May 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/18/virg_cw_huff/
Virgin: stop whinging and deal with the debt (14 May 2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/virgin_media_analysis/