£42m for Virgin Media boss in Liberty Global deal Even more staff who signed up to a subsequent share scheme - around 4,300 of them - will receive a substantial windfall of Virgin Media shares which will be converted into Liberty Global ones. Their stakes will be worth nearly two and a half times whatever they chose to invested at the start of the scheme, although they will not vest until November 2014. Mr Berkett told The Telegraph: "It shows that, if you have the right innovation and the approach to customers, you can create value, even in a difficult market." The New Zealand born telecoms chief said he is not ready to retire but that he had "not given any thought" to what his next role might be. Michael Fries, the chief executive of Liberty Global, who was celebrating his 50th birthday as he sealed the deal, said that Virgin Media would stick to its existing strategy of investing heavily in rolling its fibre network out across Britain, under the Virgin Media brand. It is one of the best in the market so we don't intend to change that one bit. Liberty Global already has a strong presence in parts of Europe, yesterday's deal will see the rivalry between its chairman John Malone and News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch brought to Britain for the first time. With around 5m UK customers, Liberty will go head to head with BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster which has more than twice as many subscribers and in which News Corp has a 39pc share. It will use its increased bargaining power with European regulators to try and loosen the company's grip on market. "This gives us a bigger seat at the table," Mr Berkett said. We are both friends and enemies [with BSkyB but] Liberty Global, as a European operator of scale, will be able to present an alternative voice, whether against the incumbent telecoms companies of against content production studios. In the past, Virgin Media has expressed particular anger that although it licences content from BSkyB, the satellite operator prevents it from making that content available to Virgin customers on multiple different devices, such as smartphones and tablets, in the same way that it is available to BSkyB subscribers.