British billionaire Richard Branson said in an interview with the BBC on Thursday that he believed he would “lose everything” at the height of the pandemic and came under fire when his group, Virgin, appealed to the government for help.
Richard Branson had tried to enlist the help of Boris Johnson’s conservative executive, who had denied him a plea of inadmissibility, probably believing that the businessman’s finances allowed him to bail out his company without appealing to taxpayers.
“We had 50, 60 all had been punished, and the sports clubs were all closed, the hotels were all closed,” recalls Richard Branson, who adds: “the worst would have been if 60,000 people (Virgin group employees, editor’s note) had ended up on the street”.
Richard Branson lost a lot with covid
The billionaire, who says he has personally lost some £1.5bn during the pandemic, had finally pumped £200m out of pocket to save his Virgin Atlantic airline from bankruptcy. “There was a time when I thought we were going to lose everything,” he says. Richard Branson says he was “a little down” for a few months. “He had never experienced this before,” he says.
“The personal money that I earn I give entirely to charity,” the businessman still assures during an interview in River, in which he also said that he regretted “the billionaire label.” “All I can say is that we have paid billions and billions in taxes over the years and we will continue to do so and our companies pay taxes no matter what country and territory they are in,” he said.
Inheritance in progress
Richard Branson had lived “one of the most extraordinary days” of 2021, floating at an altitude of 86 km for a few minutes aboard VSS Unity, the Virgin Galactic ship, his space tourism company. But after a failure in January, Virgin Orbit, which designs rockets dedicated to launching small satellites, filed for bankruptcy last month in the United States for sale.
The 72-year-old businessman also claims to have begun to think about his succession. “We have serious family discussions” about this issue, he says.
Source: BFM TV
