Richard Branson

RICHARD BRANSON

 

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, better known as Richard Branson, the owner of the Virgin Group with more than 400 companies most notably the Virgin Record Company is a well-respected and recognized entrepreneur who has devoted his life to work and growth of his business empire.

He best explains his life and efforts in his autobiography as “My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them,….from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I had to attempt it”

His initial business venture was to start a magazine called the “Student” in 1966. Within four years of starting his magazine, Richard Branson had set his sight on the music industry and used his magazine as a tool to advertise popular records and sold them, under the name of Virgin, at a considerable discount compared to the main street record dealers.

At the time he had seen a flaw in a marketing agreement which limited the discount of products due to a stringent restrictive marketing agreement between the material producers and the marketing companies which basically limited the marketing of products to a limited number of outlets that lead to limited marketing competition and increase of product price. In effect, he had seen the potential of being able to market products outside such restrictive regulations.  By doing this, Richard Branson had started a trend which would lead to large scale discounting of recorded music a few decades later.

He had also seen the potential of recording music and for this reason he set up his own recording studio which would be leased out to any aspiring artist. This in turn allowed him to be able to sign record deals with many chart topping artists such as the Sex Pistols and Culture Club.

As one of the pioneers of the budget airline, Virgin Group acquired a short haul European airline and rebranded it to Virgin Express. This was in addition to the Virgin Atlantic airline which he had setup in 1984 and years later when he had to financially support this airline he was forced to sell off his Virgin Records to EMI for 500 Million Dollars. He was later quoted as saying “I cried when the final sale documents were signed”.

The potential of air travel has lead Virgin Group owning and operating companies such as Virgin Australia, Virgin Nigeria and Virgin America.

During the 90’s and as mobile telecommunication was growing, Virgin Mobile was setup in 1999 as the world’s first mobile Virtual Network Operator. This meant that Virgin Mobile had no specific mobile network and had contracts to use “everything, everywhere”.

Richard Branson had later sold Virgin Mobile UK to NTL:Telewest  for One Billion Euro in 2006 only to have NTL:Telewest rebrand itself to Virgin Media in 2007. All together Virgin Mobile currently operates in 8 countries out of the initial 10. Virgin Mobile ventures with QTEL (Qatar) and Singtel (Singapore) has so far been closed down due to disputes with Vodaphone in Qatar and lack of business in Singapore.

Richard Branson now heads approximately 400 companies ranging from airlines to telecommunication, media, entertainment, health and space tourism.

In order to increase his assets and eventually decrease his personal expenses he has setup a complicated network of offshore trusts and companies and he is estimated to be worth five billion dollars. Such a network of companies would effectively exempt him of most taxes if he ever sells his shares in his companies.