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
Louis Necker his wife Isabelle André, whom he had married in 1752 and came from Marseille. In 1761 he was forced to resign from his professorship after a scandal (Vernes-Necker case). In 1762 with the help of his brother he was appointed in a trading house in Marseille and added to his last name de Germany, after the family estate near Rolle. He was dropped from the Académie des sciences's list of Corresponding Members in 1767. In 1770 he moved to Paris. In 1772 he became a banker at . In 1773 he remarried. Between 1774 and 1778 he must have been