Sir Richard Branson feared he was going to lose his entire business during the pandemic.
The Virgin Group founder told the BBC he personally lost around £1.5 billion during the Covid crisis.
He said he found a media backlash “painful” after asking the government for a loan to save the company.
He was criticised for asking for a bailout when Virgin Atlantic hit trouble, given his personal wealth and home on a Caribbean island
Sir Richard admitted that the struggles to save his businesses left him “a little depressed” for a couple of months.
“I’d never experienced that before in my life,” he said.
“We had 50, 60 planes all on the ground, and the health clubs all closed, the hotels all closed. And the worst [case] would have been 60,000 people out on the streets.”
The support the company requested was, he said, “not gifts from government, but underwriting loans so the cost to the airline… was not prohibitive.”
But the government refused his request for a reported £500 million bailout/.
A private rescue deal eventually saw the Virgin Group inject £200 million, with an additional £1 billion provided by investors and creditors.
“There was a time when I thought we were going to lose everything,” Sir Richard said. “We sold shares in companies that were public and that was one way we managed to find money.”