Today he is one of the highest profile billionaires in the United Kingdom and he is best known as the founder of the Virgin Group, a conglomerate of more than 400 companies. Born on the 18th of July 1950, Sir Richard Charles Nicolas Branson started his life in Blackheath, London as the first child of Edward James Branson, a barrister, and Eva Branson, a former ballet dancer and air hostess.
The couple had two daughters after him and one of the most imposing figures in their family was the grandfather of Richard, the Right Honourable Sir George Arthur Harwin Branson who was known as Mr Justice Branson for his role in the High Court of Justice.
Branson began his education with the Scaitcliffe prep school of Berkshire and then went to Stowe School in Buckinghamshire until he was 16 years old when he decided to drop out. He remembers that due to his dyslexia his academic performance was lacking and that the headmaster told him during his last day in school that he yould either end up in prison or become rich. After leaving school he began a youth-culture magazine named Student and it was run by students, selling advertising for 8000 dollars in its first edition launched in 1966. Since advertising covered the production costs it was spread for free and 50,000 copies were given out.
The parents supported his enterprises and The Student became very successful once he managed to interview personalities like the psychiatrist R.D. Laing or Mick Jagger. In 1969 Branson was living in a London commune where most of the musical scene in Britain was active, so he came up with the idea of a mail-order record company that would be able to fund his magazine. The name Virgin came to him since they were new in the business and thus it seemed quite appropriate. Apparently the suggestion came from one of his employees.
The company allowed him to expand his business with a record shop in Oxford Street, London in 1971 and a dissent began due to the selling of records that were declared export stock. There wasn’t any court action since Branson agreed to repay any unpaid taxes. The settlement was paid with the aid of his mother Eve who had to re-mortgage the house.
The year 1972 was the launch of a record label called Virgin Records with Nik Powell. They bought a country estate in Oxford and it became the Manor Studio with Mike Oldfield as their first artist. Oldfield recorded the single Tubular Bells in 1973 which was an instant hit. The success led to new artists seeking the Virgin Records label with popular names like Sex Pistols, Culture Club, Rolling Stones or Genesis, propelling the company to become one of the top six record companies on the globe.
In his personal life he has a daughter called Holly and a son called Sam with his then girlfriend Joan. They had another daughter called Clare Sarah who died four days after birth and this is when they decided to get married.
In 1982 the gay nightclub Heaven was bought by Virgin and two years later the Virgin Atlantic Airways were formed along with several Virgin Megastores. The large number of ventures didn’t mean that all of them were successful, and the year 1992 proved a difficult one since the record label wasn’t making sufficient profits. A year later they had to sell the company to THORN EMI for the sum of 1 billion dollars. This was a very hard thing to swallow for Branson but he tried to remain in the music business with the creation of Virgin Radio and a second record company called V2 sterted in 1996 that publishes the records of artists like Powder Finger or Tom Jones.
Although most saw the railway business as a decreasing one, Branson won the franchises for the former Intercity West Coast and Cross-Country sectors of the British Rail in 1993 for Virgin Trains. Virgin Mobile came into being in 1999 and Virgin Blue, later renamed to Virgin Australia started in 2000, making him the ninth richest person in the world in 2006 according to Sunday Times with a worth of over 3 billion pounds. The entrepreneurship ventures he started awarded him the knighthood in 1999.
By the year 2004 the Earth wasn’t big enough and thus a space tourism company called Virgin Galactic was initiated to take passengers into suborbital space. Virgin Fuels wants to exploit the alternative fuel options as a response to global warming and in 2006 Branson pledged to invest the profits coming from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains into the research for eco-friendly fuels.
There are over 400 companies in the Virgin Group spread over 30 countries and aside from the businessman, Branson enjoys sports a lot, breaking the record for the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean with the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II in 1986. He was also the first person to cross the Atlantic and Pacific with a hot air balloon in 1987 and 1991. Along with Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett he made several attempts to go around the world by balloon and in March 2004 he set the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel in an amphibious vehicle in a Gibbs Aquada, taking him only one hour, 40 minutes and six seconds. The Top Gear cast tried to break this record with an automobile constructed by them but didn’t manage to.
He wrote a book entitled “Losing My Virginity” that became an international best-seller in 1998 and made a lot of public appearances either in television, film or print. He was a guest in Friends, Baywatch or Birds of a Feather and has cameo appearances in Casino Royale, in Around the World in 80 Days as a hot-air balloon operator, or in Superman Returns with his son, Sam, in a Virgin Galactic suborbital shuttle.
Aside from the aforementioned involvement in eco-friendly fuel sources he is a part of a larger initiative begun in the 1990s with Nelson Mandela called The Elders that are a dedicated group of leaders working without any personal interest to solve the global conflicts of today. He is also a sponsor of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children and he hosts environmental gatherings on his private Necker Island in the Caribbean.
