Branson and sheikh go for final frontier
VIRGIN Galactic’s space flight business is selling a $280m (£170m) stake to Manchester City football club’s Middle Eastern owner.
Sir Richard Branson will sell 32 per cent of the company to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who last month made a £1.5bn profit selling shares in Barclays.
Branson aims to have commercial space flights running in two to three years and the venture has been valued at $900m (£548m).
The company has already collected $40m in ticket sales from 300 would-be space tourists, including physicist Stephen Hawkins and ex-racing driver Niki Lauda.
As part of the deal, Mansour has been given exclusive rights to set up a space port in the Gulf and operate research and commercial tourist flights from the United Arab Emirates.
He is investing in Virgin Galactic through his investment fund Aabar, and will also contribute $100m towards developing Virgin Galactic’s satellite business.
Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel yesterday said it would buy out Virgin Mobile US in a deal that values the business at $483m.
Sprint, which already owns 13.1 per cent of Virgin Mobile, will pay a mix of shares and cash to buy the rest of the company from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, South Korea’s SK Telecom and public shareholders.
Amid the flurry of dealmaking, Branson said he was starting to see green shoots for the global economy, but was still unsure whether the turnaround would continue.
“There have been some hopeful signs in the last six weeks, but I think the jury is still out to see whether that’s self-sustaining or not,” he said.