Dealwatch: Richard Branson

"It makes the sale more likely, as private equity would want to come in and do their own thing anyway. Whether they can make a deal happen [in this] credit market is the question."

• Virgin Media announced a review July 2 after a buyout offer from the Carlyle Group, which The Wall Street Journal at the time said valued Virgin Media's equity between £4 billion and £5 billion ($8 billion and $10 billion). The company already has nearly £6 billion in debt.

• On July 29, Liberty Global Inc. founder John Malone told the Financial Times he was interested in Virgin Media but hadn't had a close look at the company.

• However London's The Business said Blackstone Group LP might pull out, fearing a Virgin Media buyout would hinder its ability to meet its benchmark of 20% internal rate of return should it buyout Virgin Media, while TPG has reportedly dropped out over concern about the target's business model.

• In 2006, Virgin rejected a bid, pegged at $30 per share, from a bid consortium including Providence Equity Partners Inc., Blackstone Group LP, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Cinven Ltd.

Virgin Media has existed in its present state following the 2006 sale of Virgin Mobile to cable group NTL Inc. for more than for $1.84 billion, and Branson became NTL's largest shareholder, with an 11% stake, just months after NTL in October 2005 picked up rival cabler Telewest Communications plc in a $6 billion deal. The Virgin deal gave NTL an advantage over the U.K.'s top pay-TV group, British Sky Broadcasting Group plc, controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and BT Group plc.

Almost ominously, The Deal's Jonathan Braude wondered in November 2006 whether Branson wanted to be Murdoch:

What about Richard Branson, the flamboyant, blond-locked balloonist and founder of a passel of companies named Virgin? ... He already has a radio station, known as, you guessed it, Virgin Radio Ltd. He publishes comics (don't ask) and books. Could his ambitions stretch to TV programming and broadcasting? To Virgin TV? It's not so far-fetched. ... [The Virgin Mobile sale] included a 30-year branding deal. During the course of 2007, NTL will replace its own tired and unloved brand with the Virgin name across all its customer-facing businesses.

A tangle with BSkyB, then, ensued when the latter bought a 17.9% stake in the U.K.'s oldest commercial broadcaster ITV plc, which effectively blocked a Virgin-led bid for the group. It's under regulatory review. Though the outcome is important, The Deal's Phineas Lambert asserts, some analysts contend Virgin Media will likely maintain an interest in the broadcaster, ownership aside.

FLYING HIGH, CLEANING UP

While stormy skies in New York threw a wrench into the morning commute Aug. 8, they weren't enough to stop one of Richard Branson's latest endeavors from taking flight. Despite delays, Virgin America Inc.'s first coast-to-coast U.S. flight took off from New York's JFK airport en route to San Francisco. Days later, Virgin Group confirmed buying a 20% stake in Malaysia-based discount carrier AirAsia X for nearly £7 million (14.1 million). The company may also expand in Russia and China, a spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.

But back to the U.S. airline market. Whether the low-cost carrier, which totes perks like mood lighting, massage chairs in first class, food to order anytime, 3,000 MP3s on every flight and access to 25 pay-per-view movies on seat-back televisions, can emulate the success of Branson's other airlines -- pilot carrier Virgin Atlantic Airways, the U.K.'s No. 2 operator to British Airways plc, which a Virgin statement claims holds every major travel award, and its Australian counterpart Virgin Blue -- remains to be seen, as The Deal's Lou Whiteman points out:

Virgin America appears set to do a lot of transcontinental flying, a strategy that has been a money pit for many discounters. Low-fare airlines typically look to offset those fares by getting more daily round trips out of their equipment. However, cross-country round trips tie up airplanes for most of the day, making it harder for carriers to generate multiple fares from individual planes. Frontier Airlines Corp. and discount king Southwest Airlines Co. have both cut back on transcon flying, concluding that there is more money to be made elsewhere.

Still, Virgin America figures to face no shortage of competition. JetBlue Airways Corp. flies to the West Coast from JFK and offers many of the amenities Virgin America promises.

While the growth of Virgin Group Ltd. is far-reaching and the history extensive, Branson, a most-colorful billionaire entrepreneur, founded Virgin in 1970 as a mail-order record company and later opened a single record shop in London. Virgin Music's equity was sold to Thorn EMI in 1992 in a $1 billion deal. Branson set his sights on telecom with Virgin Mobile in 1999 and established low-cost carrier Virgin Blue to serve Australia in 2000.

So maybe Branson has tried and failed to make it around the world in a hot-air balloon, more than once, but his successes are many, and Branson could arguably be on the brink of garnering a slice of U.S. travel market share.

Meanwhile, Branson is busy with new endeavors. Virgin is dabbling in alternative energy with Virgin Fuels, a $400 million vehicle set up by Virgin Group in 2006, which in July pumped an undisclosed sum into Pasadena, Calif., biofuel developer Gevo Inc., investing alongside the likes of highly active cleantech investor Vinod Khosla's Khosla Ventures.

The fund also invested alongside Khosla in September 2006 for an estimated $160 million second round for Menlo Park, Calif.-based ethanol technology developer Cilion Inc.

Among other Virgin projects: a chauffeured motorcycle service; a commercial space tourism group; Virgin Unite, a cause aimed at tackling social and environment issues; and Virgin Earth, a $25 million challenge to anyone who can come up with a viable design to reduce greenhouse gasses to materially reduce climate change. --Carolyn Murphy