Richard Branson

Richard Branson

Image:Richard Branson.jpg Sir Richard Branson at Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer planned takeoff
Born:	July 18 1950 (age 57) Shamley Green, Surrey, England
Occupation:	Chairman of Virgin Group
Net worth:	Image:Green Arrow Up.svg £4 billion (US$7.8 billion)
Spouse:	Joan Templeman (1989 — present) Kristen Tomassi (1972 — 1979), divorced
Children:	Holly Branson, Sam Branson

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950, Shamley Green, Surrey, England), is a British entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand of over 200 companies. His first business venture was at age 16, when he published a magazine called Student; Branson then set up a record mail order business in 1970, and then a chain of record stores in 1971 now known as Virgin Megastores. With a flamboyant and competitive style, Branson's Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label. Today, his worth is estimated at over £4 billion (equivalent to US$7.8 billion) according to The Sunday Times Rich List 2006.^[1]

Biography

Youth

Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School (now Bishopsgate School)^[2] until the age of 13. He then attended Stowe School until he was 15. Branson has dyslexia, resulting in poor academic performance as a student. He was the captain of football and cricket teams, and by the age of 15 he had started two ventures that eventually failed: one growing Christmas trees and another raising budgerigars.

At 16, Branson quit school and moved to London, where he began his first successful business, Student magazine. When he was 17, he opened his first charity, the "Student Valley Centre".

Record business

Branson started his first record business after he travelled across the English Channel and purchased crates of "cut-out" records from a record discounter. He sold the records out of the boot of his car to retail outlets in London. He continued selling cut-outs through a record mail order business in 1970. Trading under the name "Virgin" he sold records for considerably less than the so-called "High Street" outlets, especially the chain W. H. Smith. The name 'Virgin' was a selling point because records were sold in a new condition (unlike in other shops where records were being handled when listened to in record booths). At the time many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements which limited discounting, despite efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to limit so-called resale price maintenance.^[3] In effect Branson began the series of changes that led to large-scale discounting of recorded music.

Branson eventually started a record shop in Oxford Street in London and, shortly after, launched the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell. Branson had earned enough money from his record store to buy a country estate, in which he installed a recording studio. He leased out studio time to fledgling artists, including multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield.

In 1971 Branson was arrested and charged for selling records in Virgin stores that had been declared as export stock. He settled out-of-court with UK Customs and Excise with an agreement to repay the unpaid tax and fines. Branson's mother Eve re-mortgaged the family home to help pay the settlement.

Virgin Records' first release was Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which was a best-seller and British LP chart topper. The company signed controversial bands such as the Sex Pistols, which other companies were reluctant to sign. It also won praise for exposing the public to obscure avant-garde music such as the krautrock bands Faust and Can. Virgin Records also introduced Culture Club to the music world. In the early 1980s, Virgin purchased the gay nightclub Heaven.

To keep his airline company afloat, Branson sold the Virgin label to EMI in 1992, a more conservative company which previously had rescinded a contract with the Sex Pistols. Branson is said to have wept when the sale was completed since the record business had been the genesis of the Virgin Empire.^{[citation needed]} He later formed V2 Records to re-enter the music business.

Branson is married and has two children, Sam Branson and Holly Branson.

Business exploits

Branson formed Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984, launched Virgin Mobile in 1999, Virgin Blue in Australia in 2000, and later failed in a 2000 bid to handle the National Lottery.

In 1997, Branson took what many saw as being one of his riskier business exploits by entering into the railway business. Virgin Trains won the franchises for the former Intercity West Coast and Cross-Country sectors of British Rail. Launched with the usual Branson fanfare with promises of new high-tech tilting trains and enhanced levels of service, Virgin Trains soon ran into problems with the aging rolling stock and crumbling infrastructure it had inherited from British Rail. The company's reputation was almost irreversibly damaged in the late 1990s as it struggled to make trains reliably run on time while it awaited the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line, and the arrival of new rolling stock.

Virgin has acquired European short-haul airline Euro Belgian Airlines, renaming it Virgin Express, and subsequently merging it with SN Brussels. It also started a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria. Another airline, Virgin America, is set to launch out of San Francisco International Airport in 2007. Branson has also developed a Virgin Cola brand, but is now retreating only to the UK market, and even a Virgin Vodka brand, which has not been a very successful enterprise. As a consequence of these lacklustre performers and perceived obscure accounting practices, the satirical British fortnightly magazine Private Eye has been critical of Branson and his companies (see Private Eye image caption).^[4]

After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks" (see expanded reference in Virgin Atlantic Airways), Branson sued rival airline British Airways for libel in 1992. John King, then-chairman of British Airways, counter-sued, and the case went to trial in 1993. British Airways, faced with likely defeat, settled the case, giving £500,000 to Branson and a further £110,000 to his airline and had to pay legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson divided his compensation (the so-called "BA bonus") among his staff.

On September 25, 2004 Branson announced the signing of a deal under which a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, will license the technology behind Spaceship One to take paying passengers into suborbital space. The group plans to make flights available to the public by late 2009 with tickets priced at $200,000. The deal was mostly financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and the American aeronautical engineer and visionary Burt Rutan.

Branson's next venture with the Virgin group is Virgin Fuel, which is set to respond to global warming and exploit the recent spike in fuel costs by offering a revolutionary, cheaper fuel for automobiles and, in the near future, aircraft. Branson has stated that he was formerly a global warming skeptic and was influenced in his decision by a breakfast meeting with Al Gore.^[5]

Branson has been tagged as a "transformational leader" in the management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that is bottom-heavy rather than strangled by top-level management.

He was 9th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, worth just over £3 billion.

On 21 September 2006, Branson pledged to invest the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains in research for environmentally friendly fuels. The investment is estimated to be worth $3 billion.^{[6] [7]}

On the 4 July 2006 Branson sold his Virgin Mobile company to UK cable TV, broadband and telephone company NTL/NTL:Telewest for almost £1 billion. As part of the sale, the company will pay a minimum of £8.5million per year to use the Virgin name and Branson will become the company's largest shareholder. The new company was launched with much fanfare and publicity on 8 February 2007 under the name Virgin Media. The decision to merge his Virgin Media Company with NTL was in order to integrate both of the companies' compatible parts of commerce. Branson used to own three quarters of Virgin Mobile, now he only owns 15 percent of the new Virgin Media company.^[8]

In 2006 Branson formed Virgin Comics and Virgin Animation an entertainment company focussed on creating new stories and characters for a global audience. The Company was founded with author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and entrepreneurs Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Chopra.

Branson also launched the Virgin Health Bank on 1 February 2007, offering parents-to-be the opportunity of storing their baby's umbilical cord blood stem cells in private and public stem cell banks after their baby's birth.

On 9 February 2007, Richard Branson committed to a $25 million prize for a practical plan to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and global warming, called the Virgin Earth Challenge. Branson will judge the contest along with 5 other environmental campaigners, such as Tim Flannery and Al Gore. The entrant must present a project unlike technologies being currently developed.

World record attempts

Richard Branson has been involved in a number of world record-breaking attempts since 1985, when in the spirit of the Blue Riband he attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the fastest recorded time. His first attempt in the "Virgin Atlantic Challenger" led to the boat capsizing in British waters and a rescue by RAF helicopter, which received wide media coverage. Some newspapers called for Richard Branson to reimburse the British government for the cost of his rescue. In 1986, his "Virgin Atlantic Challenger II" made a successful crossing, beating previous records by 2 hours. This was followed a year later by the epic hot air balloon crossing of the same ocean in "Virgin Atlantic Flyer". This was not only the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic, but was the largest ever flown at 2.3 million cubic feet (65,000 m³) capacity, reaching speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour (209 km/h).

In January 1991 Branson crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada, the furthest distance of 6,700 miles. Again, he broke all existing records, with speeds of up to 245 miles per hour in a balloon of 2.6 million cubic feet (73,600 m³).

Between 1995 and 1998 Richard Branson, Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett, made a number of attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In late 1998 they made a record-breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii but were unable to complete a global flight before Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in Breitling Orbiter achieved the first circumnavigation in March 1999.

Television, film, and print

Branson has guest starred, usually playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, Only Fools and Horses, The Day Today, a special episode of the comedy Goodness Gracious Me and Tripping Over. Branson also appears in a cameo early in XTC's "Generals and Major's" video.

He also was the star of a reality television show on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire, in which sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and sense of adventure. It did not succeed as a rival show to Donald Trump's The Apprentice and only lasted one season.

His high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire — the 2000 AD series Zenith featured a parody of Branson as a super villain, as the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition at the time. He is also caricatured in The Simpson's episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love" as the tycoon Arthur Fortune, and as the ballooning megalomaniac Richard Chutney (a pun on Branson) in Believe Nothing. The character Grandson Richard 39 in Terry Pratchett's Wings is modeled on Branson.

He has a cameo appearance in several films, Around the World in 80 Days (2004) where he played a hot air balloon operator, Superman Returns, where he was credited as a "Shuttle Engineer", alongside his son Sam, with Virgin Galactic-esque commercial suborbital shuttle at the centre of his storyline. He also had a cameo in James Bond film Casino Royale. Branson played a passenger going through airport security. He makes a number of brief and disjointed appearances in the cult classic documentary Derek and Clive Get the Horn which follows the exploits of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore recording their last comedy album. .

In early 2006 on Rove Live, Rove and Sir Richard pushed each other into a swimming pool fully clothed live on TV during a "Live at your house" episode.

Branson is a Star Trek fan, so much that he named his new spaceship VSS Enterprise in honour of the famous Star Trek ships, and in 2006, offered actor William Shatner a free ride on the inaugural space launch of Virgin Galactic. Branson was prepared to donate $3 million for continuation of the prematurely canceled Star Trek: Enterprise television series.^[9]

Politics

Branson was honoured by the Conservative government in the 1980s, and was briefly given the post of "litter tsar" by Margaret Thatcher – charged with "keeping Britain tidy." He was again seen as close to the government when the Labour Party came to power in 1997. In 2005 he declared that there were only negligible differences between the two main parties on economic matters.^[10] He reputedly considered running for Mayor of London in 2004, but decided not to. Branson has described himself as a libertarian.

Controversy

Branson has in the past openly admitted to smoking cannabis, and considered selling the plant in Virgin stores if it were to become legal.^[11]

Business practices

Branson's business empire is owned by a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies. The Sunday Times stated that his wealth is calculated at £3.065 billion; if he were to retire to his Caribbean island and liquidate all of this he would pay relatively little in tax.^[12]

When Virgin Mobile launched its service in Canada in 2005-3-1, the use of "naughty nurses" in its advertising triggered The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario to demand an apology from Branson and an immediate stop to the campaign, and called on members to boycott Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile spokeswoman Paula Lash said the company never intended to offend anyone, but was not about to pull the advertising.^[13]

When Virgin Mobile included "super hot holiday" wrapping paper with the December 2005 issue of youth magazine Vice, as part of the Hot Box promotion^[14], the wrapping paper contained illustrated holiday angels, where the male angel is touching the female's breast, while the female angel has her hand on the male's genitals.^[15] Famous Players stopped its partnership deal with Virgin Mobile after a complaint.

Honours

In 1993, Branson received the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University.

He became Sir Richard Branson when he was knighted by the Queen in 1999 for "services to entrepreneurship".^[16]

Branson is the patron of several charities, including the International Rescue Corps and Prisoners Abroad, a registered charity which supports Britons who are detained outside of the UK.

Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 list of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). Sir Richard also ranks No. 86 on Channel 4's 2003 list of "100 Worst Britons".

See also

• Virgin Group
• List of Richard Branson's business ventures

Notes

References

• Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity: How I've Survived, Had Fun, And Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way, 1999, Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-8129-3229-3
• Branson, Richard. Losing My Virginity, Revised Edition First Published in Great Britain by Virgin Books Limited, London, 2002
• Branson, Sir Richard and Prescott, Colin. To the Edge of Space: The Adventures of a Balloonist, 2000, Box tree. ISBN 0-7522-1865-4
• Branson, Sir Richard. Sir Richard Branson, the Autobiography, 2002, Longman. ISBN 0-582-51224-7
• Branson, Sir Richard. Losing my virginity — The autobiography, 2005, ISBN 0-7535-1020-0
• Bower, Tom. Branson, 2001, ISBN 1-84115-400-8
• Branson, Sir Richard. Screw It, Let's Do It: Lessons in Life, 2006, ISBN 0-7535-1099-5
• Branson, Sir Richard. Screw It, Let's Do It Expanded: Lessons in Life and Business, 2007, ISBN 0-7535-1149-7

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