🔴@richardbranson, until now, been reluctant to open up about the pandemic and how it was the most difficult time in his career.
It is well-documented that Virgin Atlantic, was taken to the brink of collapse.
But he now reveals that financial difficulties went much deeper
🗣️“I'd spent 50 years building a business and I suddenly thought ‘Christ. Was it really worth that 50 years?’ It looked like the whole lot was going to come crashing down,” says Sir Richard Branson
➡️“We were in the cruise business. In the airline business. In the fitness clubs business. In the hotels business.”
“I thought I'd been quite smart and diversifying everything. But I had to sell 85% of my shares in Virgin Galactic to keep everything on track”
✈️Coming into the pandemic with more debt than its rivals, there was strong suspicion among many in the aviation industry that Virgin Atlantic would be one of Covid’s corporate casualties
✍️“Too small to access the state aid provided to its larger rivals such as British Airways; and too big to access small company financial support,” writes @ojngill
🗣️“On a purely selfish basis…I should have let Virgin Atlantic go on two or three occasions in my lifetime,” he explains, with the pandemic being one of them,” says Sir Branson
➡️ “But it was something that we felt, I felt, that the public would be very sad to see Virgin Atlantic go”
🗣️“It was a horrible, horrible time. But from our point of view, Virgin has come out, if you look at it, our brand is now stronger than it was in 2019”
➡️In July 2021 Jack Lear founded Jobalots, which takes old stock off retailers’ hands but sells to small businesses, eBayers, market traders and charities.
Its turnover in 2022 will be £3m
📦His team of 45 processes 220,000lb of unwanted goods a week and has so far saved 3,000 tons from landfill.
Many are items that have been returned to retailers and are in perfect working condition
🔴US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen revealed on Tuesday that, come October 18, she will exhaust her budgetary tricks keeping the lights on, as Congress is deadlocked by another impasse over raising the debt limit
💵Washington has, yet again, been hit by a debt ceiling standoff that runs the risk of a default on Treasuries, or US government debt…
⚠️The fiscal brinkmanship between the opposing Democrats and Republicans threatens to result in a government shutdown this week
The oil "super majors" are reinventing themselves for net-zero life, deploying their engineering and offshore know-how to lock carbon underground and unlock hydrogen above ground…
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are doing the same.
Abu Dhabi is already developing desert solar power for $1.35 per kWh.
This will be converted into hydrogen through electrolysis to make clean synthetic jet fuel.