Word: branson
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...fact is, although some of the best-known Branson businesses are in the black-the main airline, trains, Virgin Direct financial services and the Megastores all turn profits, says Whitehorn-plenty more just plain haven't worked. Virgin Drinks, the cola company, lost millions in recent years. Virgin Express, a Brussels-based discount airline that trades on the nasdaq for about $1 a share, down from more than $27 in 1998, has been hit by its dependence on connections with Belgium's beleaguered Sabena airline...
...Time was when Branson could do no wrong in the eyes of U.K. opinion makers; now that he has been knighted it sometimes seems he can do no right. Virgin's reams of cheerful consumer research notwithstanding, Branson came in third on bbc radio's lighthearted year-end Villain of the Year poll. And in December an unauthorized biography by journalist Tom Bower-which seems to try the fancy trick of painting Branson as both a Machiavellian schemer and a reckless fool-ranked alongside Branson's own autobiography on the Sunday Times business best-seller list. (Branson has sued Bower...
...this proves only that managing a big brand into respectable middle age isn't easy. Consider that Branson is thinking about asking for up to $43 million from the government to cover the cost of maintaining his doomed bid to wrest the lottery franchise away from its current operator Camelot. All this for a business-not associated with any Virgin company-that was designed to give its profits to charity. Sir Richard says money can come from the Treasury, which taxes the lottery. But Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrats' spokesman on the lottery, warns that it would likely come...
...comes out the good causes fund, we'll give it straight back to charity," says Branson. "This is just to deter us from getting our costs back." Branson-who doesn't think the public associates Virgin with his lottery fight-says it's a matter of principle. He actually came within a whisker of getting the business last year and believes he was misled into spending more money to maintain a bid he should have won on the merits. So why did Branson lose the lottery? "It's rather awkward for me to say why," says Branson, coyly. "Ring...
...Because basically he didn't deserve to get it," says David Yelland, editor of the aforementioned tabloid. Although the Branson bid promised to improve the games and deliver more money to charity, the commission questioned whether Branson really had the stuff to make sure it all came off. Yelland suspects that with Westminster still reeling from the Millennium Dome mess, the risk was just too great. "You can bugger up the Dome and win the election," he says. "You bugger up the lottery, and you're really in trouble...