BOOK REVIEW. Hunk or hot air?

A book on the travails of Britain’s homespun playboy billionaire Richard Branson will inevitably draw comparisons, odious though they may be, with our very own once swashbuckling entrepreneur, Vijay Mallya, who is mired in battles of his own over his now defunct airline, Kingfisher.

Mallya once famously said, when asked if he was India’s Branson, that the Briton was the UK’s Mallya! Going by Tom Bower’s stinging book on the hippie billionaire, as he describes him in Branson: Behind the Mask , which catalogues a string of high profile business failures for the Virgin brand, Mallya wouldn’t want any more comparisons with Branson.

The author’s antipathy towards Branson comes through strongly right across the book. In Bower’s book, Branson just can’t do right, as he goes on to describe Branson’s failures whether it is running British trains or his much-hyped Virgin Galactic, which promised space travel for the well-heeled but is yet to take off, or his attempts to run a bank through Virgin Money.

Surely, one would think, Branson must have done some things right along the way for a high school drop out to have become a successful billionaire. But, no. Statements such as “Branson’s success depended on his close relationship with politicians, not least Tony Blair” abound. Branson’s actions, says Bower, militate against his public persona as a self-made, flamboyant magnate who is a hero to many ambitious young entrepreneurs.

That persona is the result of a mean media machine which is constantly at work in the Branson empire, he says.

Going around Instead of the transparency he so espouses, Branson moved to Necker, the sun-kissed Caribbean island he bought in 1978, “which he was to use as his tax haven”. Says Bower, “Throughout his career, Branson has sought to avoid taxes: first illegally in a purchase-tax fraud, and later legitimately by carefully structured corporate pyramids…” And, of Necker itself, Bower says, “the reason his airline is owned by 11 successive companies, ending in the British Virgin Islands, is not so its owner can enjoy the sunshine. Rather it is to avoid scrutiny and taxes…”

Bower’s contention is that after Branson’s initial success with Virgin Music and Virgin Atlantic, the airline, his forays into a host of unrelated businesses trying to leverage the Virgin brand have been flops.

“Ever since Virgin’s failed investments in clothes, colas, cosmetics, cars, cinema and energy, his search for another success proved elusive,” Bower writes in the chapter, ‘Virgin’s Saviour’. That saviour was to be the mobile business, Virgin Mobile.

The author gives no credence to a business opportunity spotted and backed by Branson. After all, entrepreneurship is all about risk-taking and backing seemingly fanciful ideas. The idea to rent mobile phone spare capacity put up by various phone service providers and offer low call rates is credited to Tom Alexander, an executive at British Telecom, who didn’t have the resources to take it forward. With Virgin’s backing, Alexander quit BT to set up the business from scratch.

Bower’s contention is that Branson did not back up the idea with financial resources, but would the business have been as wildly successful as it was in Britain without the Virgin brand? And without Branson’s showmanship? A fact that Alexander himself concedes in a conversation. Among Branson’s talents was organising spectacular launches for which the author grudgingly gives credit. For Virgin Mobile’s launch, he appeared on a float in Leicester Square, surrounded by topless models, posed long enough for pictures to be taken and disappeared before the police arrived.

Virgin Mobile didn’t meet with the same success in the US and Canadian markets and Branson sold the business to Sprint and Bell. “Even his putative Indian venture was struggling,” writes Bower. “He had finally found a partner — Tata Teleservices — and would launch the service in March 2008, but three years later Branson abandoned that venture too, giving his 50 per cent stake to his partner.

Bower is irked by Branson’s brazenness in everything he does. He writes about Branson’s visit to India. “He had last flown with 30 British journalists to Mumbai in October 2012 to relaunch Virgin’s flights to India. Shepherded to various vantage points, they would witness his flower-strewn drive through the city with Branson dressed as an Indian groom on the roof of a black and yellow taxi and surrounded by Bollywood dancers… ‘I’ll say we are planning routes to Hyderabad, Goa and Bangalore,’ he told his staff. He faced the difficulty that Virgin Atlantic had no slots at Heathrow, nor the money to finance the routes in the near future, but Virgin got the desired headlines,” writes the author.

Still in spotlight Bower’s book, while it talks of the large losses totted up in various failed businesses, doesn’t really delve into why many of them failed. Like his India forays with Virgin Mobile and Virgin Air. Why did Branson withdraw the Virgin brand when many MNCs are hotfooting it to India for its large market? No substantial explanation is offered. The book makes for interesting reading as it outlines the multiplicity of businesses that Virgin is in and gives some idea of its complexity as well. But its sarcastic undertone gives no leeway to Branson as a businessman of some credibility.

The last words of the book say it all. As Bower writes, “A decade ago, his ownership of global music, media and airline businesses ranked him alongside the Silicon Valley billionaires as an inspirational star. But since then, his empire has shrunk, his relative wealth has diminished. He no longer owns any of the principal Virgin businesses and the company has ceased to innovate….” Though, he concedes, “In normal circumstances, a fading idol is of little consequence. But Branson is special. For a new generation of aspiring entrepreneurs, the master still maintains his mystique. He remains in the spotlight as the iconic model of a super wealth-creator whom many yearn to copy.

“No doubt he has created prosperity for himself and for a handful of others, but any enhancement of Britain’s economy and society by the nation’s most famous businessman has been limited.

“Virgin is proving to be a brand without a legacy. The inventor has enjoyed an amazing ride, but his new followers will draw the long lessons from his glory. As the curtains begin to fall, his swansong appears to be protecting the money stashed away offshore.” Now that Bower has ‘unmasked’ Branson, we will have to look to the future to see if the maverick entrepreneur has indeed left a lasting legacy or not.

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