Tonight and tomorrow on the BLOOMBERG TELEVISION® program "Night Talk," anchor Mike Schneider talks to Billionaire Richard Branson.
Branson talks about how the world is going to get out of the global economic crisis. "It's going to be up to entrepreneurs everywhere; especially those who've got a bit of money to try to you know help dig us out of this by cautious investments here and cautious investments there. And, perhaps even opportunities that come from a crash like this."
"I think it’s important that businesses that have got some cash don't just leave it in the bank and sit on it, for the sake of everybody in order to avoid a massive unemployment problem. We've still got to look for investments that make sense and push forward."
"This is a climate where entrepreneurs are born. Now, trying to find the cash is tough."
"Virgin America will actually benefit bizarrely from this crisis, Virgin Atlantic has benefited from this crisis because a lot of airline we were competing with - all the business class jets Eos and Maxi-Jet have all gone bust, the biggest holiday companies out of the UK have gone bust, and so because we have deep pockets and because we have a well respected airline a lot of that business is coming our way."
He talks about rival British Airways proposed merger with American Airlines. "I would be flabbergasted if the competition authorities allowed BA and American, the 2 biggest carriers in the world to be allowed to effectively merge."
He also talks about hedging fuel prices. "More by fluke than anything else Virgin America hadn't hedged because it was a new carrier, we will almost definitely start hedging quite soon and then we'll actually have the lowest cost base of any airline........another $20 fall would be nice and most likely we'll get in and hedge"
He talks about getting back into the mortgage business, "It won't be a massive footprint. If we'd succeeded in buying Northern Rock, which we came very close to doing, then you would have seen a light of high street Virgin Bank stores. But as it is, we didn't succeed in doing that. So it will be a more modest mortgage company and not having high street stores will most likely mean that we can be more competitive anyway."
He talks about how the Lehman collapse altered Virgin’s strategy. "We were about to launch City Hotels and our partner of 25% share holder was going to Lehman Brothers and I was meant to be on a plane to fly to sign and announce the deal on the day that Lehman’s went bust, that's been delayed by a month or two and I suspect we'll end up funding that ourselves."
"Virgin Atlantic saw this coming years ago and just decided to conserve cash and they've been very conservative over the last couple of years and they now have 2-3 billion dollars of cash so that if a lot of people stop flying they can ride it out - we learnt a lot from 9/11."
"People should remember this is not 9/11, this is just money."
"Night Talk" airs in the U.S., Europe and Asia on Bloomberg TV at 10PM on weeknights and is simulcast on Bloomberg Radio at 10PM. Bloomberg Radio is broadcast on 1130AM in the New York Metropolitan area and is available on XM and Sirius. The Friday night Show re-airs over the weekend Sat at 8:00-9:00pm, 10:00-11:00pm and Mon 12:00am - 1:00am.
"Night Talk" can also be seen on Bloomberg.com (http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/shows.html), is podcast at (http://www.bloomberg.com/tvradio/podcast/night_talk.html) and also on iTunes under Business News.
For information, tapes and transcripts please contact Heidi Tan (htan14@bloomberg.net). For guest suggestions, please contact Robin Wood (rwood12@bloomberg.net)
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