The multimillion-pound failures of three of Sir Richard Branson’s highest-profile companies have been revealed for the first time.

Accounts filed with Companies House show that Sir Richard accumulated operating losses of more than £300 million from the Virgin Megastores retail business.

The 125 UK stores were sold two years ago to Zavvi, which itself went into administration at the end of 2008.

Virgin Holdings, a company that owns a number of Sir Richard’s businesses, submitted its accounts for the year to the end of March 2008 only last week and they reveal the full extent of the Megastore losses. The accounts show that the company’s profits plummeted from £151.7 million in 2007 to a loss of £227.3 million after being hit with a one-off operating loss of £324.3 million.

A Virgin Group spokesman said that this was mainly because of losses accumulated over many years at the Megastores, which were formally written off when the business was sold.

The accounts for Virgin Holdings also reveal that Virgin paid Zavvi £61 million to break a licensing agreement for the use of the brand.

The music retail business was not the only Virgin company to lose money last year.

Virgin Holdings, which includes Sir Richard’s profitable rail and airline businesses, wrote off nearly £21 million when it sold Virgin Vie cosmetics to a management buyout. It paid a further £8.8 million to remove the Virgin name from the company.

Meanwhile, accounts for Barfair, another Virgin holding company, reveal that the assets of Virgin Bride were sold for only £1 after the closure of its last store in Manchester. Virgin Bride was launched with typical Virgin fanfare in 1996 and Sir Richard memorably wore a bridal dress to the opening party.

Both the cosmetics and bridal businesses had been scaled back in recent years but were disposed of only at the end of last year.

The accounts for Barfair, which owns Virgin’s drinks and holiday businesses, show that it had a much better year, with profits of £55 million, compared with a loss the previous year of £190 million.

However, since March last year Barfair has lent $165.6 million (£102.2 million) to Virgin America, Sir Richard’s new airline in the United States, as part of its launch funding. Barfair is committed to loaning a further $62.4 million to the airline.

Barfair’s total net debts amounted to £1.4 billion but a spokesman for Virgin said that this figure had been inflated by inter-company loans.

Although Virgin lost large sums of money on its retail businesses last year, it has also made money offloading other companies. It has sold Virgin Mobile Canada for about $160 million and even made $150,000 from the sale of a limousine business in California.

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