Necker Island (British Virgin Islands) world, the challenge begins at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with the top 10 new innovations progressing to the finals at Necker Island where Branson joins the judging panel along with technology figures and investors from Silicon Valley. The Necker Cup, an exhibition tennis tournament held at the end of the tennis season, has been held on the island annually since 2012. In February 2017, former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited Necker as guests of Sir Richard Branson. On August 22, 2011, The Great House burned down in a blaze believed to be
Jacques Necker concentrated in and around Paris early July. Necker proved to be powerless as tax-revenue dropped quickly. A first loan of thirty millions (1,200,000 livres), voted the 9th of August, had not succeeded; a subsequent loan of eighty millions (3,200,000 livres), voted the 27th of the same month, had been insufficient. Credit was wrecked, according to Talleyrand; for Mirabeau "the deficit was the treasure of the nation" as it had made many changes possible. In September the treasury was empty. Talleyrand, the bishop of Autun proposed “national goods” should be given back to the nation. In November 1789 ecclesiastical possessions were