OREANDA-NEWS. British billionaire Richard Branson will lay his own Necker Island in the Caribbean to provide financial assistance to his international conglomerate, the Virgin Group, including to save Virgin Atlantic from the collapse of the new coronavirus pandemic. This was reported by an English newspaper.

Entrepreneur, who also owns the space travel firm Virgin Galactic, plans to convince the British government to lend his airline a £ 500 million ($ 620 million) loan to help it overcome the "devastating effects of the pandemic". The billionaire plans to use the proceeds from the island’s collateral to “save as many jobs as possible” in Virgin Atlantic.

Branson is the seventh richest person in the UK. His fortune is estimated at £ 4.7 billion ($ 5.8 billion). For the past 14 years, he has lived in the British Virgin Islands, a dependent territory of the United Kingdom, free of certain taxes. In this regard, he noted that he was not going to appropriate the money of British taxpayers, but only counted on "a commercial loan that the airline will repay".