Читать книгу Branson - Tom Bower - Страница 7

In early June 1988, Ken Berry, a discreet director of the Virgin Group, arrived in Tokyo on a secret assignment. Berry, a deal-maker trusted by Richard Branson, was searching for $150 million.

Although Virgin Music was a publicly owned company, Richard Branson preferred not to reveal Berry’s mission to his British shareholders and his two non-executive directors.

Berry had arranged to meet Akira Ijichi, the president of Pony Canyon, a subsidiary of a giant Japanese media company. Their introduction at the Intercontinental Hotel in the Shinjuku district lasted two hours.

‘This meeting has got to remain secret,’ stipulated Berry. Ijichi nodded his agreement. Berry continued: ‘Virgin needs money to expand. We’re looking for $150 million.’ That was not the complete reason for Berry’s search for money.

Three months later, in September, Akira Ijichi arrived in London with his translator Moto Ariizumi, a junior executive in the company. Both stayed at the Halcyon Hotel, in Holland Park, conveniently close to Branson’s home. By then, their New York bankers had undertaken an external examination of the Virgin Group’s business and finances. Negotiations, the bankers had suggested, should start at $125 million for a 25 per cent stake.

Berry, a natural deal-maker, could sense Ijichi’s enthusiasm. The Japanese was flush with cash. During their discussions in Virgin’s offices on the Harrow Road, Berry emphasised on several occasions, ‘We don’t want any publicity. We don’t want the shareholders to know.’ The secrecy suited the Japanese: they wanted the deal to succeed.

Later, at the end of their second day in London, the two Japanese met Richard Branson for dinner at his home. Their host was charming but firm: ‘The company’s worth $600 million. Not a dollar less.’ Ijichi nodded.

The following morning, the two Japanese were welcomed by Branson on his houseboat in Little Venice. Amid the stripped pinewood floors, cane furniture and leafy plants Branson shone, in Moto Ariizumi’s opinion, as a ‘quite extraordinary but fashionable’ representative of the alternative culture.

Before their departure, Akira Ijichi agreed to pay $150 million for a 25 per cent stake although several important details remained unresolved. Branson and Berry were untroubled by the delay. In the meantime, Branson had dramatically announced his decision to privatise the Virgin Group. His unexpected decision to buy back the shares from the public had caused considerable surprise although everyone was grateful that he valued the Virgin Group at £248 million, double the stock market’s value. However, when Virgin’s shareholders met in November 1988 to formally approve Branson’s proposed privatisation, neither the shareholders nor Virgin’s two non-executive directors were aware of Berry’s continuing negotiations with the Japanese. If the shareholders had known about Pony Canyon’s agreement that the Virgin Group was worth $600 million, or £377 million – £129 million more than the sum offered to shareholders – they might have demanded that Branson buy back the shares at the same valuation.

Pony Canyon’s investment was formalised in May 1989. The public would remain unaware that the relationship had been initiated before Branson’s announcement of the privatisation.

Within two years, Virgin’s status would be utterly transformed. Branson was hailed as a genius after selling Virgin Music for £560 million or $1 billion. Since his deal with Akira Ijichi, Branson had doubled his fortune and become one of a rare breed: a legend in his own lifetime, an icon and a billionaire.

Eight years later, on 8 November 1999, Branson was invited as a British hero to deliver a Millennium Lecture at Oxford University. The Examination Room was packed with admirers, students and elderly academics. Mr Cool Britannia, the blameless face of New Britain, was introduced by Lord Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, as ‘a lighthouse for enterprise who owns 150 companies and all of them are profitable’. Branson, dressed casually in his characteristic pullover, smiled. He knew that Butler’s praise was inaccurate. With the exception of his airline and rail franchises, all of his major companies in 1999 were trading at a loss.

Branson was rarely asked to face unpleasant contradictions. Voted Britain’s favourite boss, the best role model for parents and teenagers, and the most popular tycoon, he was widely admired by most Britons. Branson, the public believed, was at heart a charitable public servant whose companies just happened to earn handsome profits. Idealism was his business.

The opening of Branson’s sermon to his young idolaters in Oxford emphasised the irrelevance of education. Only those rejecting university would become millionaires, he preached.

His second theme foretold the future of industry: it was dead. ‘Don’t go into industry to make money,’ he urged. Manufacturers with assets would soon be worthless. ‘Focus on customers,’ was his gospel. Only brands would be valuable in the future. ‘I believe there’s no limit to what a brand can do,’ he enthused. Expertise was also worthless: ‘If you can run one business, you can run any business.’ He personally had known little about the music and airline businesses, the sources of his two fortunes, which naturally led to his third article of faith urged on his audience: ‘get the right people around you and just incentivise them’. His secrets of success were bold and liberating to an audience unaware of Branson’s increasing inability to attract and retain the brightest young brains.

His admirers in the audience sought from Branson an inspiring vision for his personal and Britain’s future prosperity. ‘What,’ one asked, ‘is your major ambition in the new millennium?’ The hero paused. Bill Gates would have anticipated the next generation of developments of the computer and the internet. Rupert Murdoch, whom Branson once aspired to overtake, would have expounded the future of global communication. But Branson avoided such complicated speculations. The icon’s face assumed the countenance of destiny as he intoned his reply: ‘To run the national lottery.’ Branson gazed thoughtfully across the hundreds of placid faces, unaware of the frisson of disappointment which enveloped his audience.

Aspiring tycoons in the hall, regarding Branson as a model for ‘shaking up industries and offering a better product’, were fed a simplistic, reductive homily from Britain’s greatest entrepreneur. To create real wealth, they were urged by the acceptable face of capitalism, rely on a label. Ignore education, ignore expertise and ignore technology. In a citadel of academic excellence, Branson had preached anti-knowledge. The new generation, he urged, should believe that sustainable businesses could be created without ‘a great business plan or strategy. Just instinct.’

The generational division among those inside the Examination Hall was blatantly evident. To those dozens of students, eager to shake their hero’s hand, proffering scraps of paper for his autograph, Branson’s self-generated image of a buccaneer bestriding his own world was laudable. They admired the champion of the underdog who advertised himself as a product. He was the admirable, fun-loving millionaire.

The older, more sceptical members of the audience, as they slipped out of the hall for a glass of sherry in the Master’s lodgings, mentioned a fallacy. Unlike Bill Gates, they murmured, Branson’s fortune was forged on old ideas that ignored innovation. The result was, they sniffed, self-evident. While Bill Gates’s fortune was valued at $100 billion and constantly rising, Richard Branson’s wealth was a disputed $3 billion and possibly falling.

Three days later, on 11 November 1999, in Leicester Square, London, Branson was sitting on a bright red sofa in a huge Perspex container fixed on a trailer. Six naked young girls were grouped around the master of self-promotion. His latest extension of the brand was Virgin Mobile, a belated bid to join the New Economy developed and dominated for some years by Vodafone, Cellnet and others. Branson never paused to contemplate the relevance of six naked girls clutching mobile telephones to herald his entry into the New Age. Nor was he concerned that his latest marketing stunt technically broke the law. Securing free advertising in the following day’s tabloid newspapers was his sole ambition. ‘Public relations is an important part of running our business,’ Branson once explained. ‘About 20 to 25 per cent of my time is spent on PR.’ No one sold Branson like Branson. His business skills included the publicity skills of a salesman unafraid to yell for attention in a market even if, as he had confided to his Oxford admirers, he lacked any presence or expertise.

Seeing a policeman striding across Leicester Square, Branson abruptly abandoned the naked girls and scurried to a waiting taxi. While the girls were ordered to dress, Branson had time to reflect that it was just another ordinary day, promoting himself and his ambitions.

‘We intend to sell 100,000 telephones by Christmas,’ he pledged that morning, emphasising Virgin’s core values of quality and fun. ‘And one million by Christmas next year.’ By January 2000, just over 100,000 telephones had indeed been sold, although the figure included 20,000 offered at a discount to Virgin employees and their families, but four weeks later Virgin’s telephone network temporarily collapsed. The Virgin brand, promoted by himself as a ‘global business’, was limping. Anti-knowledge, balanced on the edge of a financial precipice, was an uncertain guarantee for success.

Later on the same day as the launch of the Virgin Mobile, Branson was swigging a bottle of beer at a good humoured promotion party for one thousand young men and women advertised as ‘Very Sexy. Very Decadent.’ A constant flow of admirers sought a few minutes in his company and the opportunity for a photograph. All were attracted by his courage, his blokeishness and his social conscience. The ‘daredevil’s’ oft repeated ambition to ‘make the world a better place’ appealed to those attracted by a pleasant, friendly and unthreatening superstar. Calmly, he stood beside his wife, Joan, personifying the Virgin Dream. At 10.15 p.m., his wife signalled their departure. Outside, a car waited to drive the Bransons to their two adjoining houses in Holland Park worth £10 million. One house, after a recent fire, was for sale. A portent, some unkind observers carped, of the fate of a man who, after thirty years within the warm embrace of tabloid headlines, had become unexpectedly imperilled.

Opportunism, luck, energy and genius created Sir Richard Branson, a man of the people, a man of conscience and a courageous adventurer. The same qualities also produced a man of controversy and cunning. Wilfully and repeatedly thrusting himself into the spotlight, the hero seeks public approval but complains about criticism. Proud to be a tycoon of our time, his appetite for profit and power created a conglomerate which he assumed empowered him to write his epitaph in his own lifetime. Instead, his future is jeopardised by his weaknesses. Almost forty years of self-glorification have taken a toll of a man seeking everlasting fame while occupying the shadows. The self-promoting blueprint for Britain’s economic regeneration offers a tawdry example of mixed blessings and unhelpful lessons. Those prying beyond his veil of secrecy find an entrepreneur unexpectedly contemplating an uncertain future. In a juggler’s career, a moment of reckoning periodically re-emerges. There was one in 2000, and another could be glimpsed on the horizon in 2008.