Sir Richard Branson (Entrepreneur) - Information, Featured Articles, London's Movers & Shakers

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Sir Richard Branson (Entrepreneur)

Richard Branson was born in 1950 and educated at Stowe School, where he established a national magazine called Student at the age of 16. He started a Student Advisory Centre aged 17 to help young people.

In 1970 he founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer and shortly thereafter opened a record shop in Oxford Street, London. During 1972 a recording studio was built in Oxfordshire where the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded Tubular Bells which was released in 1973.

The first album of the newly created Virgin Records went on to sell over five million copies and over the years many household names, including, Belinda Carlisle, Genesis, Phil Collins, Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones helped make Virgin Music one of the top six record companies in the world. The equity of Virgin Music Group - record labels, music publishing, and recording studios was sold to THORN EMI in 1992 in a US$1 Billion deal.

The interests of Virgin Group have now expanded into international Megastore music retailing, the Internet, book and software publishing, film and video editing facilities, clubs, travel, hotels and cinemas through over 100 companies in 23 countries.

Airways, formed in 1984, is now the second largest British long haul international airline and operates a fleet of Boeing 747 and Airbus A340 aircraft to New York, Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, Orlando, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Athens, Johannesburg, Tokyo and the Caribbean.

The airline is founded on the concept of offering a competitive and high quality upper class and economy service, it is now the holder of many major awards and it has won the Airline of the Year Award several times.

During 1997 Virgin took over Britain's two most run-down rail franchises, CrossCountry and the West Coast Main Line. Virgin is engaged in a £2 billion fleet replacement programme to create one of the most modern rail networks in the world by 2002.

In 1999, the combined sales of the different Virgin holding companies exceeded £3.5 billion. In addition to his own business activities Richard is a trustee of several charities including the Healthcare Foundation, a leading health care charity which was responsible for the launch of a health education campaign relating to AIDS in 1987.

The foundation has become involved in a lobbying campaign to restrict tobacco advertising and sponsorship in sport called Parents against Tobacco. His help in the initial funding of Charity Projects helped that organisation to raise over £27 million in 1989 alone through campaigns such as Comic Relief.

Since 1985, Richard has been involved in a number of world record-breaking attempts. In 1986 his boat, Virgin Atlantic Challenger II rekindled the spirit of the Blue Riband by crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the fastest ever-recorded time.

This was followed a year later by the epic hot air balloon crossing of the same ocean in Virgin Atlantic Flyer, which was not only the first hot-air balloon to cross the Atlantic but was also the largest ever flown at 2.3 million cubic feet capacity, and reached speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour (209 kph).

In January 1991, he crossed the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Arctic Canada, the furthest distance of 6,700 miles again breaking all existing records with speeds of up to 245 miles per hour, in a balloon of 2.6 million cubic feet.

Between 1995 and 1998 Richard Branson, Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett (who joined the team after the sad death of Alex Ritchie), made a number of attempts to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In late 1998 they made a record breaking flight from Morocco to Hawaii, but their dream of a global flight was shattered by bad weather before a Swiss team successfully circumnavigated the globe in early 1999.

In December 1999 Richard Branson was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's millennium New Years honours list for services to entrepreneurship.

Richard lives in London and Oxfordshire, and is married with two children.