Branson, Richard
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Wikipedia-Article "Richard Branson"
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950), a famed British entrepreneur, is best known for his widely successful Virgin brand, a banner that encompasses a variety of business organisations. The name "Virgin" was chosen because a female friend setting it up with him commented "We're all virgins at business".
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Biography
Richard Branson was educated at Stowe and he began his entrepreneurial activities there by the setting up of Student Magazine. Branson set up a record mail order business in 1970, started a record shop in London shortly afterwards and then in 1972 the record label Virgin Records with Nik Powell. The company's first issue was multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which was to be a best-seller. Branson's company also courted controversy by signing bands like the Sex Pistols, whose contract more conventional companies had dispensed with. Virgin also introduced Culture Club to the music world. Later, in 1992, Branson sold the Virgin label to EMI, the conventional company who had rescinded the contract of the Pistols due to their excessive vulgarity (they were caught swearing live on national TV).
Described as "flamboyant" in the media, Branson's personality can partly be credited for his successful career. He has an ability to attract media attention to his new business exploits, not always the kind of publicity he would seek, as frequent criticism of his unreliable Virgin Trains demonstrates. Branson is known for his outlandish media events used to promote his businesses. He is keen on playful antagonisms, exemplified by his "Mine is bigger than yours" decals on the new Airbus A340-600 jets used by his airline. He has also made several unsuccessful attempts to fly in a hot air balloon around the world.
The hot air balloon, called the "Virgin Atlantic Flyer," was the first hot air balloon ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and was the largest ever flown at 60,513 m³ (2,137,000 ft³) volume, reaching speeds in excess of 130 mph (209 km/h). In 1991, Branson crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada, a distance of 7,672 km (4,767 miles), but their track took them a claimed 10,885 km. This again broke all existing records with speeds of up to 245 mph (394 km/h) in a balloon measuring 2.6 million cubic feet (74,000 m³). In October 2003, he teamed up with balloonist Steve Fossett as lead sponsor for an attempt to break the record for a non-stop flight around the world. A new aircraft, the GlobalFlyer, was built specially for the attempt by Scaled Composites and on March 3, 2005, at about 01:50 PM CST, Fossett completed the record-breaking flight after 67 hours and 1 minute, with an average speed of nearly 300 mph (480 km/h).
He 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. He has also started a European short-haul airline, Virgin Express, and a national airline based in Nigeria, called Virgin Nigeria.
After the so-called campaign of "dirty tricks," Branson sued rival airline British Airways (BA) for libel in 1992. John King, then-chairman of BA, 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; further, BA was to pay the legal fees of up to £3 million. Branson divided his compensation among his staff, the so-called "BA bonus."
In July 2003, Branson flew a replica of the first heavier-than-air flying machine, the glider designed by Sir George Cayley, at the original site in Yorkshire.
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 SpaceShipOne 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 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.
Branson was 7th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2005.
Politics
He was feted 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.[1] He reputedly considered running for Mayor of London in 2004, but decided not to. Branson has described himself as a libertarian.
Honours
In 1993 Richard 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"[2].
He has guest starred, playing himself, on several television shows, including Friends, Baywatch, Birds of a Feather, The Daily Show and Only Fools and Horses. He also was the star of a reality television show on Fox called The Rebel Billionaire where sixteen contestants were tested for their entrepreneurship and their sense of adventure.
Sir Richard appears at No. 85 on the 2002 List of "100 Greatest Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public). Branson's high public profile often leaves him open as a figure of satire - the 2000 AD series Zenith featured a parody of Branson as a supervillain as at the time the comic's publisher and favoured distributor and the Virgin group were in competition. He is also caricatured in The Simpsons episode Monty Can't Buy Me Love as the tycoon Arthur Fortune.
See also
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 0812932293
- Branson, Richard. "Losing My Virginity", Revised Edition First Published in Great Britain by Virgin Books Limited, London, 2002
- Branson, Sir Richard and Prescot, Colin. "To the Edge of Space: The Adventures of a Balloonist", 2000, Boxtree. ISBN 0752218654
- Branson, Sir Richard. "Sir Richard Branson, the Autobiography", 2002, Longman. ISBN 0582512247
- Branson, Sir Richard. "Losing my virginity - The autobiography", 2005, ISBN 0753510200
External links
- Virgin Corporate Website
- Unofficial blog of the Virgin Group
- Gonzo Way of Branding Fast Company magazine article on Sir Richard Branson
- Unofficial blog of Sir Richard Branson
- Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)
- International Ballooning Commission (CIA) notable flights
- Svenska Ballongfederationen, Pacific ocean flights
- Profile on BBC News dated September 27, 2004
- Excerpt and Insights from Richard Branson's autobiography "Losing My Virginity"
- Richard Branson - TV Tome profile
- Unofficial Branson "Quest For The Best" website - Media Man Australia
- Flying the Cayley glider