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Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950, Shamley Green, Surrey), sometimes abbreviated as SRB for "Sir Richard Branson", is an English entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organizations. It is estimated that Branson is worth over £3 billion (equivalent to more than US$5 billion) according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2006.• On the 12th of October, 2006, he emphasized his stated plan is to invest $3 billion over 10 years to fight global warming.•
Life and career Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School (now Bishopsgate School) • until the age of 13. He then attended Stowe School until he was 15. Branson suffered from dyslexia and had a generally curious spirit, resulting in his not being a good student. He was the captain of football and cricket teams, and by the age of 15 he had started two ventures that eventually failed: growing Christmas trees and raising budgerigars. At 16, Branson decided to quit school and move to London, where he began his first successful entrepreneurial activity setting up Student magazine. When he was 17, he opened his first charity, the "Student Valley Centre". Branson started his first record business after he traveled across the English Channel and purchased crates of "cut-out" records from a record discounter. He sold the records out of the trunk 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. At the time many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements which limited discounting, despite efforts in the 1950's and 1960's to limit so-called resale price maintenance. 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 gained enough profits from his record store to purchase a country estate, in which he installed a recording studio. He leased out studio time to fledgling artists, including multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield. Virgin Records' first release was Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which was a best-seller and British LP chart topper. The album was released by Virgin after no other company dared to release the unconventional record . 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 conservatively-minded 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. He later formed V2 Records to re-enter the music business. Branson is married and has two children. 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 BR. 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 modernization 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 an overly successful enterprise. As a consequence of these lackluster 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.) 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, countersued Branson, 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 he 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 2007 with tickets priced at $200,000. The deal was mostly financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and the modern American space engineer & visionary, Burt Rutan. Branson's next venture with the Virgin group is Virgin Fuel, which is set to exploit the recent spike in fuel costs by offering a revolutionary, cheaper fuel for automobiles and also aircraft (in the near future). Branson has been tagged as a 'transformational leader' by management lexicon, with his maverick strategies and his stress on the Virgin Group as an organization driven on informality and information, one that's bottom heavy rather than strangled by top-level management. He was 9th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, worth just over £3billion. He is the No 1 Admired Businessman in Britain, and 2nd choice amongst youth for Prime Minister (after Tony Blair).• On September 21st 2006 Branson pledged to donate the profits of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains to research environmentally friendly fuels. The donation is estimated to be worth $3 billion. • Television, film, and print Branson has guest starred, playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, The Daily Show, Only Fools and Horses, The Day Today and a special episode of the comedy Goodness Gracious Me. 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 favored 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. He has a cameo appearance in two films, Around the World in 80 Days where he played a hot air ballon operator and Superman Returns, where he was credited as a "Shuttle Engineer", alongside his son Sam, with Virgin Galactic-esque commercial suborbital shuttle at the center of his storyline. He will have a cameo in the upcoming James Bond film Casino Royale as well. 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. Politics Branson was honored 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.• 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 cannabis in Virgin stores if it were to become legal. • Another controversy came about when Virgin Atlantic allegedly reported British Airways for price fixing in June 2006.• Branson was criticised by one of his competitors, the serial entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who said, "Let's be honest – Branson is some hippy from the 1960s whereas I'm a university graduate who went through formal training to become a businessman." (Euro Business, March 2001.) Honors 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"• He is the Patron of the International Rescue Corps, which is one of the few truly independent front-line search and rescue organizations in the world – a UK-registered charity, financed solely by donations and their own fund raising, and manned totally by volunteers. Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 list of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). Ironically, Sir Richard also ranks No. 86 on Channel 4's 2003 list of "100 Worst Britons". See also Notes | ||||||||
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