Virgin Group (UK)

Virgin Group is the corporate umbrella for a large network of almost 300 different companies, offering a sometimes bewildering variety of services. The best known is the Virgin Atlantic airline. Other companies are involved in areas such as telecommunications (Virgin Mobile), cable TV (Virgin Media), financial services (Virgin Money) as well as fitness (Virgin Active) and soft drinks (Virgin Drinks). Figurehead Sir Richard Branson is without question the UK's best-known business figure. Yet he has built his empire on a series of extraordinarily risky gambles, which few would be wise to emulate. As he grows older, Branson has become less promiscuous with his investments, reducing his portfolio to a smaller collection of more viable businesses. Yet at the same time the scale of each new gamble has become bigger and bigger. In 2006, he secured the controlling shareholding in the UK's only significant cable TV network and attempted to use that as the platform to take over the commercial broadcaster ITV. In 2007, he made a similar - and equally unsuccessful attempt - to reverse his financial services unit Virgin Money into the struggling mortgage bank Northern Rock some ten times its size. Yet despite these sizeable failures, Branson generally has a reputation for winning against all the odds.

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Virgin Group website

Virgin Atlantic	Virgin Media
Virgin Money	The Trainline.com
Virgin Trains	Virgin Cola
Virgin Mobile	Virgin Publishing
Virgin Active	Virgin Wines

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