Richard Branson

Richard Branson (born July 18, 1950, Shamley Green, Surrey, England) British entrepreneur and adventurer, head of Virgin Group Ltd., known for his publicity stunts and also for setting records in powerboat racing and hot-air ballooning.

Branson, who was a school dropout, entered into his first successful business venture as a teenager with the magazine Student. When the magazine began losing money in the late 1960s, he formed Virgin Mail Order Records (so named because Branson considered himself inexperienced in business) to raise funds, and in 1971 he opened the first British discount record store. In 1973 he helped form Virgin Records, which quickly became the principal label worldwide for punk and new wave. In 1984 he became the majority backer of the airline that he renamed Virgin Atlantic Airways. Beginning with a single aircraft, the carrier succeeded despite fierce opposition from established airlines, and in 1992 Branson sold Virgin Records to raise additional money for Virgin Atlantic.

By the 1990s the Virgin conglomerate, which was among the largest privately held companies in the United Kingdom, comprised some 100 businesses, including Virgin Megastores. In 2004 Branson formed Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company that was working toward offering commercial suborbital passenger flights. In 2006 Branson sold Virgin Mobile, a wireless phone service, though he remained the largest shareholder of the company, which was later renamed Virgin Media, Inc. That same year he formed the collaborative entertainment companies Virgin Comics LLC and Virgin Animation Private Limited.

In 1986 Branson was part of a two-man team that set a record for a powerboat crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. In hot-air ballooning he and Swedish aeronaut Per Lindstrand became in 1987 the first team to cross the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon and in 1991 the first to cross the Pacific Ocean. Branson was also a member of teams that made three failed attempts in the late 1990s at round-the-world balloon flights. On the third attempt, made in December 1998, the pair were joined by American adventurer Steve Fossett, and they traveled some 8,200 miles (13,200 km), becoming the first to fly across the whole of Asia in a hot-air balloon, before being forced down off Hawaii. Branson later helped fund Fossett’s record-setting flight in 2005, in which he completed the first solo nonstop circumnavigation of the world in an airplane. In 2021 Branson made a suborbital spaceflight in a Virgin Galactic spacecraft.

Branson’s numerous charitable initiatives included pledging an estimated $3 billion in 2006 to fund environmentally friendly fuel research. In 2007, in honour of his sustained support of humanitarian and environmental causes, Branson received the Citizen of the Year Award from the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA). He published an autobiography, Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way (1998, updated ed. 2011), and iterated his business philosophy in The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership (2014). Branson was knighted in 1999.