Both Abramovich and Neville show it’s good to be nice. Branson’s motto? Screw everyone
We would all like to be a quid or two behind Roman Abramovich. The difference with Sir Richard Branson — he actually is.
Abramovich’s wealth was estimated at £11.2billion by the
Sunday Times in May 2019, Branson’s at £4.05bn. It seems a little short, but once a man is counting his billions, even on the fingers of one hand, it is fair to assume he will never want again.
So Branson, who is welcome in Britain, could have been every bit as public-spirited and generous as Abramovich, who has been made very unwelcome, in the face of the coronavirus outbreak. he just chose not to be.
he wasn’t even as munificent as Gary Neville, who has estimated earnings in the region of £20million, through his work as a footballer, coach, broadcaster and businessman. If Branson woke up to find he had as much in the bank as Neville, he might throw himself out of the window of one of his planes, but you would rather have Neville as your boss this week.
On Thursday he made a brief announcement about his two hotels in Manchester, hotel Football, near Old Trafford, and the Stock exchange hotel. While the premises will be closed, he said, no staff will be made redundant or asked to take unpaid leave. Instead, the 176 beds will be offered, free of charge, to doctors, nurses and health workers.
Abramovich, meanwhile, will foot the bill for health workers to stay overnight at his Millennium hotel at Stamford Bridge, if they are unable to commute due to the scaling back of public transport. Chelsea and Westminster hospital and the Royal Brompton are both nearby.
Now to Branson, whose response to the coronavirus crisis was to ask the 8,571 staff of Virgin Airlines to take eight weeks’ unpaid leave.
here are the maths on that. A worker taking unpaid leave in the current climate is entitled to government statutory sick pay of £94 per week. To take that for eight weeks amounts to £752. If all 8,571 workers claimed it, the total cost to the Government would be £6.44m.
Money this country can scarcely afford but is paying because a man worth billions cannot rise to the occasion and do the right thing by his employees. To cover the statutory sick pay would require 0.15 per cent of Branson’s worth. hell, to give them all £5,000 each as cover across those eight weeks would cost him 1.05 per cent.
It is the difference between a man being worth £4,050,000,000 and £4,043,600,000, or between worth of £4,050,000,000 and £4,007,144,500. either way, he is worth £4bn. And if all those noughts are making your eyes boggle, let’s try it another way.
The average wage in this country is £28,677. And £43 of that is Branson’s equivalent of meeting statutory sick pay; £301.10 would be giving employees amply enough to live on. And remember that is annual salary not a lifetime of accumulation. So it is £43 of your life’s earnings; £301.10 over half a century.
So it is very easy to say that Neville, or Abramovich, have got the money to be nice. It is the key line from the film Parasite.
‘She’s rich, but still nice,’ says chauffeur Ki-taek of the lady of the house. ‘She’s nice because she is rich,’ Chung-sook, his wife, replies. ‘hell, if I had all this money, I’d be nice too.’
But you wouldn’t, not necessarily. There are plenty of wealthy people like Branson who have loaded responsibility on to the government rather than shouldering it themselves, plenty of public figures carefully honing their brand images with pledges and promises that are not being kept in reality.
expect the publicity-conscious Branson to make some self-serving gesture in the coming days, now he sees the flak flying his way, at a raw moment when his actions will never be forgotten.
This is not a good time to be part of the problem, particularly as a billionaire.
Richard Fuller, the Conservative MP for North Bedfordshire, has already called Branson out in Parliament this week.
In 2010, when Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup, president Vladimir Putin was asked how his country would pay for such an enormous event so soon after the Sochi Olympics.
he turned to his friend, Abramovich, the financial patron of the Russia national team, sitting in the front row.
‘I don’t rule out that Mr Abramovich may take part in one of these projects,’ said Putin.
‘Let him open his wallet a little. It’s no big deal — he won’t feel the pinch. he has plenty of money.’
Abramovich howled with laughter but no doubt duly wrote the cheque exactly as requested — because it’s true. he does have plenty of money, and so does Neville and his hotel partner Ryan Giggs. But they don’t have to be good, or even nice.
‘Screw it, let’s just do it,’ is Branson’s business motto. This time, however, it seems he has decided to screw everybody, and leave it to someone else.