Planes, trains and mobiles - just how much is Sir Richard worth?

Planes, trains and mobiles - just how much is Sir Richard worth?

How rich is Sir Richard Branson? Newspaper rich lists in the past year have generally estimated his wealth at £1.25bn to £1.75bn. That now looks a serious underestimate given the success of Virgin's mobile businesses on both sides of the Atlantic and of Blue, the discount airline in Australia. A figure at least £1bn higher now looks more reasonable.

Precision is impossible because Sir Richard holds his investments via complex off-shore trusts, which he is assumed to control outright. No outsider knows his cash holdings or any personal liabilities or any mortgage arrangements. What is clear, though, is that he has structured his assets along the lines of a venture capital house - any failure is not allowed to impact on other businesses in the group.

We also know the trusts' exact holdings in all their major investments. Most are private companies but back-of-the-envelope valuations are possible because most produce standard accounts, particularly those with quoted companies as partners.

The easy one is Blue, which floated on the Sydney stock exchange last month. Sir Richard sold shares worth £128m in the float and had previously sold half the company to Patrick Corporation for £221m. His remaining 25.1% stake is worth about £250m. In total, that's about £600m.

Virgin Mobile in the UK is harder to value, but City analysts are suggesting values of up to £1bn. Being conservative, and subtracting the.....continued below

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£100m that T-Mobile could receive, Sir Richard's slice might be worth £750m.

Virgin Mobile in the US is also tricky, but three months ago Virgin and its partner Sprint invested a further $20m each; at that time, the partners valued the business at $650m. Sir Richard's 50% share was therefore worth $325m (£177m), twice what he has invested.

His fourth substantial asset is the 51% stake in Virgin Atlantic, whose results are published by Singapore Airlines, owner of the other 49%. Applying a valuation multiple similar to that of British Airways would value Sir Richard's stake at £450m. That represents a decline in value from 2000 when Singapore paid £600m for its stake.

The approximate combined total for Sir Richard's four major equity holdings, then, is £2bn.

He also has a myriad of smaller investments. Virgin Megastores, which he owns outright in Britain and America, might be worth £100m.

He also has 51% of Virgin Rail in Britain. The other 49% is owned by Stagecoach, which revalued its assets last year after unrelated problems with its Coach USA business. Despite its dreadful publicity, Virgin Rail's value was maintained at £250m, implying Sir Richard's stake was worth £125m.

We will soon also have a formal valuation of Virgin Money, assuming Sir Richard proceeds to buy out partner AMP. The price is expected to be around £75m, implying the current 50% stake is worth the same amount.

V2, the record label with artists such as Tom Jones and the Stereophonics, was valued at £170m in January 2002 by joint venture partner Morgan Stanley. That would put Sir Richard's 52.5% share at £89m, although V2 has since moved into profit.