The Brass Necker of Branson!

[TheGreenGoblin]

Sir Richard Branson has said he will put his private Caribbean island up as collateral in his attempt to persuade the UK government to save his Virgin Atlantic airline from going bust.

Branson, who is the UK’s seventh richest person with an estimated £4.7bn fortune and lives on Necker Island in the tax-free British Virgin Islands, on Monday promised in a public blogpost that he would “raise as much money against the island as possible to save as many jobs as possible”.

Branson, 69, made the pledge as he desperately tried to convince the government to give his airline a £500m bailout to help it through the “devastating impact this pandemic continues to have”.

“The reality of this unprecedented crisis is that many airlines around the world need government support and many have already received it,” Branson said in a public blogpost on Monday. “We will do everything we can to keep the airline going – but we will need government support to achieve that in the face of the severe uncertainty surrounding travel today and not knowing how long the planes will be grounded for.”

The billionaire has faced mounting criticism for pleading for taxpayers’ cash, rather than using his own fortune to rescue the airline. Branson founded Virgin Atlantic in 1984 and retains a 51% stake alongside the US airline Delta with 49%.

The former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the Guardian it was unacceptable that “rich billionaires [were] milking the system” at a time of national crisis.

Branson’s fresh plea for taxpayer support comes after the government reportedly rejected Virgin Atlantic’s proposal for a £500m bailout. The Financial Times reported on Friday night that the airline’s initial bid had been rejected and that the airline had been told to explore other ways to raise cash before seeking a state bailout.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... us-support

How I bought Necker Island...

so I quickly agreed to a purchase price of $180,000 – the only condition was that I would need to build a resort on the Island within four years.

$ value today based on the $180,000 in 1978 = +- $4.1 million, +-£2.2 million. What a steal at the time! I appreciate that he has subsequently built a luxury hotel and infrastructure plus the name and accumulated good will etc. etc. I see some sources claiming the island to be worth +- $60 million today.

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/alis ... 03601.html

But Necker Island isn't the only extravagance Sir Richard is known for - the Virgin Boss also owns a mini-submarine, a private plane, a vineyard in South Africa and a luxury safari camp in Kenya.

Thanks to owning a string of companies, Sir Richard is one of the UK's wealthiest people - not bad for a man who first started publishing The Student magazine as a 16-year-old from the basement of a rented flat.

The son of a barrister and an air hostess, Sir Richard's business acumen soon helped him branch out from selling magazines to owning his own record store on Oxford street. By 1972 he was earning enough money to launch his own label, which he called Virgin Records. And the rest, as the say, is history.

[TheGreenGoblin]

For all its travails, and now, richly deserved, atrocious reputation BA (IAG) must be hoping that by battening down the hatches (a truly mixed maritime/aviation metaphor) they will outlive Virgin by simply holding their collective breath and handling the ensuing hypoxia better than Branson's airline.

I really do hope that Virgin survives as I also wish BA (and their staff who post here) the best.

[larsssnowpharter]

Virgin Group only have 20% of Virgin Atlantic.

49% owned by Delta.

31% by KLM/Air France.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Virgin Group only have 20% of Virgin Atlantic.

49% owned by Delta.

31% by KLM/Air France.

Begs the question as to how Branson expects the British government to support such a structure. One wonders what Delta's position on all this is?

Branson's "empire" is a labyrinth of financial snail trails, tax efficient ambiguities and is long on hype and short on cash I would suspect.

Didn't the KLM/Air France deal fall through?

Answer, it did!

Virgin Atlantic Limited, which is 51% owned by the Virgin Group and 49% by Delta Air Lines.

In 2017, the British billionaire Richard Branson agreed to cut his stake in Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. to just 20% by selling one-third of the airline to Air France-KLM. In December, he had a change of heart about that $274-million deal, and opted to keep his shareholding in the company he founded at 51%. America’s Delta Air Lines Inc. owns the other half.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... on-bailout

Some sense from LA...

In fairness, the other big shareholder, Delta, is also in a tight spot. It’s burning through about $50 million of cash a day and Standard & Poor’s, a credit rating agency, has downgraded its debt to junk. However, the U.S. airline successfully extended its credit lines and its government has promised $50 billion in assistance for the industry. Delta’s market value remains above $15 billion.

If Branson is short of ready cash, there are other assets he could perhaps monetize, including a majority stake in space company Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., whose market capitalization is a lofty $2.9 billion. If no more money is forthcoming from the owners, the British government should insist that Branson dilutes his ownership of Virgin Atlantic as originally planned; only this time by signing over the equity to taxpayers.

[TheGreenGoblin]

I assume that Virgin Galactic has been an efficient tax efficient loss maker over the period while scavenging US state money and incentives (vide: getting New Mexico to fork out for a Space Port) etc.

Sir Richard Branson's space tourism venture has secured special dispensation to continue operating throughout the coronavirus outbreak, despite the US states in which it operates closing down most businesses.

Virgin Galactic has been allowed to push ahead with its plans to start sending tourists into space as soon as this year since a small amount of government work that it does means it has been deemed “critical infrastructure”.

It comes as Sir Richard’s airline, Virgin Atlantic, has been locked in talks with the British Government on securing a bail-out of around £500m to weather the crisis.

The billionaire’s Virgin Group has a 59pc stake in Virgin Galactic, which it last month transferred from the US to the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, in what it said was an “internal reorganisation” following its US stock market listing last year.

Although Virgin Galactic expects to make most of its money from charging wealthy individuals around $250,000 (£200,000) to travel on 90-minute suborbital space flights, it has government contracts to carry payloads into space and for engineering work.

Its New Mexico spaceport, from where it plans to send people to space, is run by a local authority. Virgin Galactic has a manufacturing base in the Mojave Desert in southern California.

[Woody]

For all its travails, and now, richly deserved, atrocious reputation BA (IAG) must be hoping that by battening down the hatches (a truly mixed maritime/aviation metaphor) they will outlive Virgin by simply holding their collective breath and handling the ensuing hypoxia better than Branson's airline.

Not sure that IAG is that worried about the bearded one these days, the sandpit being a much bigger threat and I can’t see them needing the slots at LHR and LGW soon

[TheGreenGoblin]

For all its travails, and now, richly deserved, atrocious reputation BA (IAG) must be hoping that by battening down the hatches (a truly mixed maritime/aviation metaphor) they will outlive Virgin by simply holding their collective breath and handling the ensuing hypoxia better than Branson's airline.

Not sure that IAG is that worried about the bearded one these days, the sandpit being a much bigger threat and I can’t see them needing the slots at LHR and LGW soon

An opportunity for startup GreenWood Airways perhaps...

[Woody]

An opportunity for startup GreenWood Airways perhaps..

With those two Rapides that you mentioned last week

[TheGreenGoblin]

An opportunity for startup GreenWood Airways perhaps..

With those two Rapides that you mentioned last week

Amen...

[k3k3]

I'd buy a ticket!

[admin]

Virgin Australia just gone into receivership.

[larsssnowpharter]

So, Branson in a pickle?

[Boac]

Small chunks.

[Capetonian]

As always, a bad loser. A man who would cheat to get what he wanted, then walk over his opponent and grind his heel in their face. A nasty piece of work behind the smiling face and the smug words. Any of the biographies (apart from his autobiography, in which he admits that he started his businesses by conning people), will show that.

His airline is very ordinary too, there's not much behind the marketing hype to make them better than any other carrier, in fact I did two consecutive trips to/from CPT on BA and VS and the service at least on BA was better.

Let VS's owners put their hands in their pockets. Branson has not paid personal tax at all in UK for 14 years. Virgin Atlantic is registered in UK but no corporation tax paid for a number of years because it operates at a loss, still pays handsome dividends to R B though.

His Virgin healthcare sued the NHS in recent years because it missed out on a contract.

He was/is an arch remainer who did all that he could to undermine the successive governments over Brexit.

And he has the nerve to ask for a loan from UK tax payers! I hope Rishi tells him to get stuffed!

If, hypothetically, Virgin and Ryanair competed over the same route and there was no other option, I would rather fly Ryanair, at least O'Leary is honest.

[barkingmad]

Try this for size;
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/c ... 91/891.pdf
He & henchmen walk away avoiding paying the UK taxpayer £2,000,000,000 and shelling out a paltry £165,000,000 as indicated in the report. Very clever contracting which easily got past the dullards in the Dept of Transport who award rail franchises.
Not bad for another business failure?
Beardy Branson’s springboard into mega success was thanks to Mike Oldfield and his “Tubular Bells” album but which Beardy has been very reluctant to acknowledge ever since.

[ribrash]

In his early days setting up Virgin Records wasn't he convicted of some type of Vat fraud.Pretending to sell records abroad and claiming some type of refund and was then able to sell the records cheaper in this country under cutting competitors.

[ian16th]

In his early days setting up Virgin Records wasn't he convicted of some type of Vat fraud.Pretending to sell records abroad and claiming some type of refund and was then able to sell the records cheaper in this country under cutting competitors.

Wasn't he done for copying cassettes and selling bootleg ones?

[ribrash]

In his early days setting up Virgin Records wasn't he convicted of some type of Vat fraud.Pretending to sell records abroad and claiming some type of refund and was then able to sell the records cheaper in this country under cutting competitors.

Wasn't he done for copying cassettes and selling bootleg ones?

Probably that as well I must confess I often called into Virgin Records on Bold Street because it was cheaper to buy records there and he seemed to get stuff that no one else did.

[Capetonian]

The scheme, as recounted in Branson’s memoir Losing My Virginity, was rudimentary: Virgin (records) would avoid paying purchase taxes on its merchandise by pretending to export albums that it actually sold in England. In Britain at the time, music retailers paid a heavy 33 percent levy on records they planned to sell domestically. But the tax didn’t apply to vinyl destined for abroad. While attempting to drive a large shipment of discs to Belgium, Branson discovered that he could stop at customs in Dover, get his export paperwork stamped, then bring the cargo back to sell at home, where he could pocket the tax savings. After a few such profitable trips, he figured, Virgin would be debt-free. “It seemed like the perfect way out,” he later wrote.

Customs descended on the shops, and Branson was hauled into jail. “I had always thought that only criminals were arrested: it hadn’t occurred to me that I had become one,” he wrote. “It wasn’t some great game about my getting one up on the Customs and Excise office and getting off scot-free: I was guilty.” He spent the night in jail, before his mother showed up and posted a family home as bail. Branson’s headmaster at school had once predicted that the young man would either become a millionaire or go to prison. “By twenty-one, he had achieved the latter,” Bowers wrote, “albeit briefly.”

https://slate.com/business/2014/05/rich ... naire.html

[ian16th]

Relying solely on my remaining grey cell, I think he might have been kicked out of school for copying & selling bootleg cassettes.