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Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic plans to go public - source

July 09, 2019 at 03:41 am EDT

(Reuters) - Richard Branson's space-tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, plans to go public as part of a deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) created by Social Capital LP Chief Executive Officer Chamath Palihapitiya, a person familiar with the matter said.

The deal was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said the SPAC, Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp, will invest about $800 million (£639 million) for a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic.

The deal could be announced as early as Tuesday morning, said the source, who declined to be named because the matter is confidential.

Virgin Galactic and Social Capital Hedosophia did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters outside regular business hours.

Branson's company is racing against Blue Origin, the space business of Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, to bring tourists into space.

Virgin Galactic in February soared to the edge of space with a test passenger for the first time, nudging the company closer to its goal of suborbital flights for space tourists.

After Branson founded the company in 2004, his ambitious timeline for taking customers into space suffered delays and a fatal setback when the original SpaceShipTwo crashed on a test flight in 2014 that killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot.

Branson has said he plans to be the first passenger on SpaceShipTwo's first commercial flight in mid-2019.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson in Seattle and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

Stocks mentioned in the article

Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
AMAZON.COM, INC.	183.3 USD	-0.16%	-1.27%	1,910B
LINE CORPORATION	5,350 JPY	-.--%	-0.19%	12.52B
VIRGIN GALACTIC HOLDINGS, INC.	1.04 USD	+1.96%	-11.11%	408M

Richard Branson

Telephony, music, finances, trains, airplanes or space exploration, the Virgin boss dares everything. A real bulimia which finds its roots in the aversion he has for the monopolies.

At sixteen, Branson creates the newspaper Students with the help of his friend Jonathan Holland Gems. Thanks to them, this newspaper becomes the mouthpiece for a generation of hippies opposed to the Vietnam War and engaged in the struggle for abortion rights.

At twenty, Richard Branson sold records by mail. Three years later he produced "Tubullar Bells" by Mike Oldfield which will be selected for the soundtrack of the movie The Exorcist. This enormous success attracts the best artists of the moment at Virgin Records as the Sex Pistols, Culture Club or Phil Collins.

Unformatted by business schools, the British businessman uses his intuition to engage in business more and more daring. Virgin Airways, Virgin Mobile to mention only the most important, show that there are no forbidden areas for the businessman the most admired of his generation. Icon in intuitive management, Richard Branson does not forget to be surrounded by the best persons in finance world as Gordon McCallum, a reference in the business world or Stephen Murphy, his Chief Financial officer and former of Unilever.

Some adventures such as cosmetics, clothing or vodka are failures but not for the businessman. When any other contractors consider these adventures as a failure, Richard Branson believes that these under achievements humanize the company and accentuate the friendly image of the boss.

Very sensitive to environmental issues, Richard Branson is hired to fight against global warming. In 2007 he gave twenty-five million dollars to reward initiatives that will be able to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But his most ambitious project is the conquest of space. For this, he signed a contract of fifteen million pounds with an American company for the manufacture of spacecraft and partnered with Philippe Starck for VirginGalactic. The first Virgin flight in space was planned for 2009.
In fact, like Google, Richard Branson has endorsed the principle of "don’t be a evil" (do not hurt) fighting to humanely manage a business became enormous.

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Virgin Radio Ltd. Virgin Radio Ltd. Specialty TelecommunicationsCommunications Virgin Radio Ltd. operates as a radio station. It operates as pop and rock radio station, which provides live online latest news and music. The firm also engages in the sale of advertising time and the related operations for radio stations. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in London, UK	Founder
Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. AirlinesTransportation Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. engages in the provision of air transportation services. It operates long haul services to various destinations including Las Vegas, Sydney, Tokyo, Delhi, Miami, and Shanghai. The company was founded by Richard Charles Nicholas Branson in 1984 and is headquartered in Crawley, the United Kingdom.	Founder

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