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Essay on Longitudinal Strategic Development Study

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LONGITUDINAL STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT STUDY RECENT PAST
INTRODUCTION
Virgin Group limited is a venture capital conglomerate founded in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson with interest in transportation, travel, mobile, financial services, media, music and fitness. It employs about 50,000 people in more than 30 countries, comprising of 300 companies and brand, with 11.5 billion pounds in revenue as at 2009, (Virgin website). (Adapted from Rob Abdul, 2001)

It started as a mail order business and gradually moved in retailing and …show more content…

This new territory caused the first major shift in the strategic thinking of Virgin as the airline was capital intensive and by 1985 airfares price war and the investment needs of virgin Atlantic (the airline) had taken its toll on Virgin finances with the result that publicly listed to raise more equity. Virgin’s music, retail, and vision business was brought together to form the Virgin Group and 35% of its equity was listed. Branson was not happy with this new arrangement because of the control that shareholders would hold on direction and this was not in keeping with his nonconformist style and also that he felt that his organization was misunderstood and undervalued by so called experts. The organization culture at Virgin was also at risk in this new arrangement and he seized the opportunity presented by the 1987 stock market crash to buy out external shareholders. Back in private hands Virgin continued to grow using funds realized from Virgin Atlantic and loans to seek out new market around the globe with the Virgin megastore in such diverse countries like United States, Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Australia using joint venture strategy with Blockbuster Corporation. The 1990s saw similar expansion with the launch of Virgin Lightships, West One Television, Virgin games, Vintage

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