Sir richard branson has control over the Virgin brand, but the composition of its subordinate organizations is different and complicated. Each Virgin Group's companies are independent, some of which are wholly owned by richard branson, while others are only partially owned. He also authorized the brand to the organizations that bought his company departments, such as Virgin Radio (now part of Scottish media) and Virgin Music (now part of EMI), with some exceptions, all of which were originally wholly-owned subsidiaries of Virgin.

To understand the structure of Virgin Group, we can understand richard branson as a venture capital investor, and use the same brand name for all its investments.