Business magnate, Sir Richard Branson has said he will pledge his luxury island resort as collateral to help get an HM’s Government bailout of his stricken airline Virgin Atlantic.
The billionaire Virgin Group chief said in an open letter to his staff that he was not seeking a handout in fact a commercial loan, believed to be in the sum of £500m.
The news comes after Virgin Group’s airline in Australia entered administration, both airlines in the United Kingdom and Australia are struggling and Branson has appealed to both countries for help.
However, he has been criticised for appealing for taxpayer aid rather than drawing on his huge wealth. Sir Richard’s fortune is thought to be well over £4bn, the large US airline Delta owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic.
Sir Richard said in his letter to staff: “Many airlines around the world need government support and many have already received it.” The crisis facing airlines, and the staff they employ, was “unprecedented,” he said.
He claimed that despite his huge net worth, this did not mean he had “cash in a bank account ready to withdraw”. Sir Richard hit back at the idea he was a tax exile who did not deserve help from the British public, claiming he and his wife “did not leave Britain for tax reasons but for our love of the beautiful British Virgin Islands and in particular Necker Island”.
In his letter to staff, Sir Richard said: “We will do everything we can to keep the airline [Virgin Atlantic] going – but we will need government support to achieve that in the face of the severe uncertainty surrounding travel today and not knowing how long the planes will be grounded for.
“This would be in the form of a commercial loan – it wouldn’t be free money and the airline would pay it back (as EasyJet will do for the £600m loan the government recently gave them).”
According to the Bloomberg billionaires index, Sir Richard is the 312th richest person in the world with an estimated $5.2bn net worth.
“I’ve seen lots of comments about my net worth – but that is calculated on the value of Virgin businesses around the world before this crisis, not sitting as cash in a bank account ready to withdraw,” he said.
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Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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