Richard Branson
The virgin group or realistically the Virgin empire has over 400 companies including trains,planes,banks, festivals, fitness groups, casino, gaming give-aways/promotions,hotels, vodka, wines, mobile tariffs, spaceships and the list goes on and on. many of these companies have duplicate companies that are set up in different countries and domains.
the virgin fortune began when Richard left school to start virgin records, a mail order record business, two years after its debut he was already opening a chain of these record stores. soon after in the 1980s he opened up virgin megastores. the megastores was a hit as he managed to open up virgin atlantic and expand the virgin records label all in the same year.
Richard lives on the necker islands, an island he found soon after its original discover, willam necker decided to abandon the island as he complained there were many poisionous insects, reptiles and arachnids.
Richard is also known for his sporting achievements, notably the record-breaking Atlantic crossing in Virgin Atlantic Challenger II in 1986 and the first crossing by hot-air balloon of the Atlantic (1987) and Pacific (1991). He was knighted in 1999 for his contribution to entrepreneurship, and in 2009, he landed at No. 261 on Forbes' "World Billionaires" list with his $2.5 billion in self-made fortune, which includes two private islands
In recent years, the over-adventurous Branson has focused much of his attention on his space tourism venture. He partnered with Scaled Composites to form The Spaceship Company, which is currently developing a suborbital spaceplane, and, in recent events, the project made an impressive leap forward with the test launch of its second space ship.
Branson was delighted by the success of his spaceship's first test, telling NBC News that "We're absolutely delighted that it broke the sound barrier on its very first flight, and that everything went so smoothly." He expects to be finishing testing the craft by the end of 2013.
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