Richard Branson says he came close to losing Virgin Group empire during pandemic

Sir Richard Branson has revealed that things got so bad for his businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic that he feared he would lose his entire empire of planes, trains, hotels, health clubs and spaceships. “There was a time when it really looked like we were going to lose everything,” the British billionaire told the BBC. “We had 50, 60 planes all on the ground, and the health clubs all closed, the hotels all closed, and the worst [case] would have been 60,000 people out on the streets. I was certainly a little depressed.” Branson said he personally lost about GBP1.5b during the pandemic. The entrepreneur said he found the media backlash “painful” when his Virgin Group asked the UK government for a GBP500m loan to help the airline Virgin Atlantic in April 2020. He said: “It’s complicated. It’s pretty difficult to explain to people when everybody is hurting. What we were concerned to do is try to get support from government, not gifts from government but underwriting loans so the cost to the airline … was not prohibitive.” Branson, who is one of the richest people in the UK, made the plea for a Treasury bailout from his private Necker island in the Caribbean, after the British airline easyJet secured a GBP600m loan from the government.<br/>