July 18, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur and founder of the global Virgin brand, is 60
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, July 18, Graphic News:  You might imagine that Richard Branson, the high-flying business tycoon and adventurer, whose net worth -- according to this year's Sunday Times Rich List -- is put at $4 billion, is planning a 60th birthday party of the distinctly spectacular variety. But his daughter, Holly, now 29 and a doctor, says it will probably be a plain old roast dinner, at home, with the extended family. Of course, when home is your own private island in the Caribbean, it is still a cut above the average knees-up, however conventional the menu. And Branson, a dyslexic, who left his privileged education at Stowe School at the age of 15 with few qualifications and started his first business a year later, is no conformist. Driven to challenge the establishment, he has ventured into everything from the music industry to public transport, winning fans and making enemies along the way. "I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on", he has said.
 
This self-confessed maverick, who sums up his approach with the motto: "Screw It, Let's Do It", has famously come a cropper on more than one occasion, pursuing a place in the endurance record books. With his friend and fellow pioneer, the late Steve Fossett, along with the Swede, Per Lindstrand, he made several highly-publicised attempts in the late 1990s to circumnavigate the globe by hot air balloon, having achieved an Atlantic crossing this way a decade earlier. Then, two years ago, he and his children -- he has a son, Sam, three years younger than Holly -- were forced to abandon an attempt on the eastbound Atlantic speed record by sailboat when a violent storm destroyed their mainsail and washed their liferaft overboard. By contrast, a commercial battle involving transatlantic routes was won when Branson settled out-of-court with British Airways following BA's infamous "dirty tricks" campaign. This protracted libel action, finally resolved in 1993, revolved around attempts by BA to poach customers from Virgin Atlantic and circulate "hostile rumours" about Branson. The Virgin boss subsequently shared the damages of more than $1 billion among his staff, calling it their "BA bonus". The bitter rivalry continues, Branson this year fiercely opposing the merger of BA with American Airlines.
 
Next on the agenda of the one-time teenage whizzkid who started out selling music by mail order and grew it into the Virgin Megastore chain, is space tourism. Virgin Galactic, the world's first space travel company, is currently building its terminal -- Spaceport America -- in the deserts of New Mexico. Designed by the award-winning British architect Sir Norman Foster, it will eventually house a small fleet of spaceships and their launch aircraft, capable of taking passengers on a two-and-a-half hour trip to the edge of space for $200,000 each. The technological idea, sparked by a conversation Branson had 20 years ago in a bar in Marrakesh with astronaut Buzz Aldrin, is now at the test-flight stage. With others hot on his heels, Branson is -- yet again -- boldly leading the way. As he has put it himself: "Business opportunites are like buses; there's always another one coming".
/ENDS

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