Branson is founder of Virgin Group, a London-based investment and marketing company. The Virgin brand is attached to more than 40 companies, including airline Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Money and Virgin Galactic, which sells flights to space. Revenue from Virgin businesses was about 17 billion pounds ($22 billion) in 2016.
Richard Branson's net worth of $5.71B can buy ...
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The majority of Branson's fortune is derived from his control of closely held Virgin Group, an investment company based on the Isle of Jersey, a U.K. crown dependency. The billionaire collects income from the Virgin brand through partnerships, affiliations and some directly controlled companies, with more than 60 Virgin businesses collecting aggregate revenue of 16.6 billion pounds ($22 billion) in 2016, according to the company's website.
Bloomberg's analysis assumes Branson has no outside equity partners in the holding company.
Virgin Group's closely held investments include a 20 percent stake in West Sussex, England-based airline Virgin Atlantic. The group also currently owns a 62 percent stake in space travel company Virgin Galactic.
He operates travel destinations, including his home and hotel on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, a chalet in the Swiss ski village Verbier, and an African game preserve. Through Virgin Enterprises, Virgin Group licenses the Virgin brand. Branson also owns 35 percent of publicly traded U.K. lender Virgin Money and 10 percent of the airline Virgin Australia.
He's netted more than $3 billion from dividends and asset sales through December 2017, based on company filings, news reports and an analysis of Bloomberg data. Taxes and market performance are applied to those proceeds.
Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950. He enrolled at Stowe School, a boarding school in Buckingham, England, at age 13, and studied there until 1966, when he left to run his first business venture, a political magazine called The Student. The school's headmaster predicted Branson would either go to prison or become a millionaire.
Branson founded Virgin as a mail order record retailer three years later, soon opening a record shop on Oxford Street in London. In 1972, he built Virgin's first recording studio, in Oxfordshire, where he made the first Virgin recording, Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells." Virgin signed the Sex Pistols in 1977, and had developed an artist roster that included Culture Club, the Rolling Stones and others before it was sold to Thorn EMI for 560 million pounds in 1992.
Branson has stakes in more than 400 companies in 34 countries, which operate in numerous industries including leisure, travel, tourism, mobile, broadband, TV, radio, music festivals, finance and health. Through Virgin Green Fund, he is looking to make investments in renewable energy and resource efficiency. Branson has, at times, held public assets, including his music and clothing company. Today, he holds one publicly-traded Virgin asset, airline Virgin Australia. Virgin Media, a U.K. telecommunications company that was listed on the NASDAQ exchange in New York, was bought by Liberty Global in June 2013.
Branson is known for his adventurism and marketing stunts. They include being the first person to cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon in 1987. He drove a vintage Sherman tank down New York's Fifth Avenue to introduce Virgin Cola in 1988, and bungee jumped off the Palms hotel in Las Vegas to introduce the Virgin America airline in 2007. He lost out to film director James Cameron in the duo's race to be the first solo submarine dive to the deepest place on Earth in 2012.
He married Joan Templeman in 1989. They have two children, Holly and Sam.