Business Vision Autumn 2017

BusinessVisioɳ | Autumn 2017

Cryptocurrency: Have we missed the boat...?

What a load of rubbish: how we deal with our waste FINE TUNING — Stereos to dream a dream on

Also in this issue...

Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc Wolf of Wall Street GBP 9.96 | EUR 14.95 | USD 15.95

• The new viewing world of Netflix • The original

• Blade Runner 2049: Can a sequel be an equal?

B RE IT L ING . C O M

Letter from the editor MAKING headway in the complex, ever-changing and interlinked strata of business, international trade and investment is, and will always be, reliant on co-operation, awareness and evolution.

Our title, our masthead, our identity and our mission are similarly linked, and dependent on the same factors – with the crucial addition of curiosity. We seek first to understand, then to inform, support and share the benefits of our platform with the entrepreneurs, visionaries, achievers and quixotic adventurers that comprise the international business world.

The appearance of ICC, World Bank, UNCTAD and OECD logos on our pages are not coincidental or opportunistic. These are the bodies and organisations with which we identify, whose values and intentions we seek to better understand. Their development, their concerns, their innovations are ours, and thus yours.

And who are you, exactly? Innovators, questers, believers, established cornerstones of industry and success stories in-themaking – welcome to our pages, and our world. Our aim is to be a bridge in communication, co-operation and awareness, our hope is to inspire, enable and foster your own hopes and aspirations with stories of courage and compassion.

But our pages are not limited to business, industry and commerce.

We also hope to provide in our magazine an outlet for the imagination and a playground for the senses: yours and ours. In each edition, Business Vision brings stories of hope, humour, irony and ambition. Travel, play, recreation, transport, art: these things too are part of our make-up.

In this Autumn edition, we cross paths with those businesses and organisations on an upward trajectory, delve into the world of cryptocurrency and dabble in the reality / fantasy of fitness in an office-based career.

Join us for a trip around the world, from Wall Street to Malta, Monaco to Madrid, South America to Portugal. Our reporters and contributors bring you insights and observations into the exciting and intricate worlds of profit, prophet, loss and loose change. We try to spread our net as wide as we can, and our wings as far as they will stretch.

Our boundaries are our horizons: unlimited. The World is our patch; let's roll.

HAL WILLIAMS hw@bv.world

Correspondence Catalan crisis concern I am writing to express my concern about recent events in Catalonia and the severe negative impact they are having.

As a Catalan with a Scottish mother, and running a small business in Tarragona, it worries me greatly that over 1,700 companies, including La Caixa and Cordoniu, voted with their feet and chose to transfer their headquarters to other parts of Spain in October.

Equally disturbing is the news that retail sales fell by 20 percent and hotel reservations plunged by 30 percent in the community.

Faconauto, the organisation that represents car dealers, has just reported that vehicle sales fell by a third last month; this is widely recognised as one of the most reliable barometers to measure consumer confidence in the economy.

If this situation continues or, heaven forbid, gets worse, I won't have to preoccupy myself with moving my business to another part of Spain as I will no longer have one.

Antoni Roig i Wilson

No end to corruption in Brazil I would like to call the attention of your readers to the desperate situation in Brazil and the connections between business and politics regarding corruption.

When our president, Michel Temer, is registered listening to a prominent businessman about bribes paid to judges and allegedly encourages him to continue doing so, yet wins a vote of confidence in the Congress by 18 votes when almost 60 of those who voted against his facing a legal process are under investigation for corruption themselves, surely it is time to say enough is enough.

The irony is that Brazil has done so much to combat corruption in the last few years, yet the right-wing movements prefer to support one of the most dishonest leaders we have ever had to prevent former President Lula returning to power in next year´s elections.

Please excuse my English as it is not my first language.

Eliane Gomes de Almeida São Paulo, Brazil 10

Is Bitcoin still a thing ... ?

I have read many articles, in print and online, about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Some appear to be encouraging investment, others discouraging it. I have had mixed success with my shares portfolio in recent years and on the advice of a friend was considering this highperforming sector of the market.

Then I recently read a piece in The Financial Times that Jason Belfort (he of Wolf Of Wall Street fame), is warning potential investors that Bitcoin is a “fraud”. The pot calling the kettle black, indeed – but If a peddler of penny stocks thinks Bitcoin is a scam, there must surely be cause for concern!

Belfort was responding to similar comments from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who should know a thing or two, so I feel I should be more than a little cautious. However, it is hard not to be tempted by tales of Bitcoin's exponential growth.

When can I expect some sort of investigation and evaluation from Business Vision on this matter? It's surely high time your reporting staff stopped straddling fences and heaping praise on selected sure-fire companies and did some good old-fashioned investigation.

Norman Thomas Birmingham Impeccable timing, Mr Thomas: turn to our cryptocurrency feature on page 22. We are evidently of one mind on the topicality and intrigue of Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, this fence is one that has to be straddled, as prophecy is not a service BV offers. We do, however, try to bring you as balanced an account as possible. Happy reading, and good luck – whatever your investment decision.

Ed

Editor Hal Williams

Assitant Editor Janet Newbury Executive Editor Susan Shaw Pictures Editor and Layout Richard Thomas

Editorial Jason Agnew John Marinus Malcolm Jones Darren Parkin Jane Rush Steve Dyson Tony Lennox Brian Curtis Naomi Snelling Kate Stanton

Art department: Ines de Klerk Cover: Alejandro Lampre Velรกzquez

Distribution Manager Thomas Terrell

Subscriptions Max Pragnell

Commercial Director Graham Church

Publisher David Eyres

Business Vision The Lansdowne Building 2 Lansdowne Rd Croydon CR9 2ER United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)203 745 7671 Fax: +44 (0)203 745 7674 Email: info@bv.world Web: www.bv.world Printed in the UK. All rights reserved.

In this issue...

Cryptocurrency's strange odyssey

16 26 The original wolf of Wall Street Football stars with business nous

66 Howard Hughes, a man of mystery

86

72

Mark Zuckerberg — next POTUS?

106

Rolls-Royce: still flying high 14

22: Fighting low growth

80 Cork industry pulls out the stops

Also:

18: Movement of the money people 20: Tax laws making Maltese cross 30: Moroccan royal's important role 32: Blade Runner: sequels and equals 34: The business world has it (red) taped 36: Where time stands still 38: What are we doing with our waste‌?

42: Lazing and grazing to early grave 44: Holdun: Patience and prosperity 46: LATAM spreads its wings 48: 10 People: Daniel Hashim 49: 10 People: Alexa von Tobel 50: Google runs rings around competitors 52: Now hear this: Tannoy rules 54: Engineering brilliance = sonic joy.

56: Straight to the top, with gain 59: 10 People: Eesha Khare 60: HAL will show you a good time

63: A perpetual quest for perfection 64: 10 People: James Park 68: Camel racing hits its stride 70: New cold war in high street 75: 10 People: Sallie Krawcheck 77: Panic in the airline industry 83: 10 People: Griscom & Volkman 84: The booming business of war 90: Chinese whispers: a new era?

92: New York's blue-collar blues 94: Monaco's underbelly 97: Close enough not good enough 98: Bezos reacts to jibes 100: 10 People: Sangu Delle 105: 10 People: Amol Yadav 108: 10 People: Jacob Dewitte 109: Bailey shrugs off Burberry 110: Award Highlights

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

102: Is FDI recovery on track?

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The wolf of Wall Street that Selfish, unfriendly, single-minded, merciless when challenged – Cornelius Vanderbilt was the epitome of the unvarnished American dream “CONTROL the market, control the profits.” It's a cold-blooded philosophy, but one that many success stories are built on. It's also the law by which Cornelius Vanderbilt – the original tycoon and once America's richest man – lived his entire life.

Vanderbilt lived to compete. It defined him. It was present in everything he did.

But if there was one thing more dear to him, something that outshone his constant desire to compete, it was the need to win.

And win he did. By fair means or foul, this enigmatic New Yorker would do anything to satisfy his burning lust for victory.

Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island on May 27, 1794. His family lived a fairly hand-to-mouth existence with few possessions, and even fewer prospects.

As a child, Cornelius was unhappy being poor and would often talk about his plans to better himself as soon as he left school.

None of his teachers would have had much faith in his ambitions though – he showed no interest in education.

At the age of 11, he left school and went straight to his father's boat, which Cornelius Snr used as a small ferry in New

Show no mercy: Cornelius Vanderbilt never minced his words York Harbour. The youngster loved the life of a ferryman – being paid to float people and goods from place to place appealed to him. Transport was something he saw as being one of the wonders of the modern age – he saw it as an adventure that would

CORNELIUS IN QUOTES “Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow.

I'll ruin you.“ “I am not afraid of my enemies, but by God, you must look out when you get among your friends.”

“I have always served the public to the best of my ability. Why? Because, like every other man, it is to my interest to do so.”

“I don't care half so much about making money as I do about making my point, and coming out ahead.“ 16

“There is no friendship in trade.”

[In 1859 on insurance at the age of 65]: “I guess I've built a hundred steamships and steamboats… I never paid a dollar of insurance… Good vessels and good masters – that's the best kind of insurance. Why should I pay somebody else to carry my risks?”

[At the age of 15]: “I just know I could make me a heap of money…“ “If a fellow's got guts he can always win.”

be dripping with potential.

He quickly caught on to a trick that would allow his father's boat to have the pick of the day's jobs. Instead of going home at the end of the working day, he would moor his father's boat in Manhattan and then sleep on board in order to be the first and only boat at the docks when people and goods began to queue for transportation the next day. By the time his father arrived for work, Cornelius Jnr had already filled the boat.

Before long, Vanderbilt had enough cash to buy his own boat. By the age of 20, he had a small fleet and acquired a nickname from the elder seafarers of the harbour: The Commodore. The moniker would stick until his dying day.

He was also one of the first boat operators to embrace steam power. He began to construct his own steamships and buy up the first of the craft to be built in New York's shipyards. His grip on the market was tightening.

He would stay up all night hatching plots on how to control his market and maximise his profits and, iron-fisted and merciless, he dreamt up a killer stroke of financial genius. By slashing his fares

he attracted an American public keen to watch their pennies. His undercutting initiative pushed his rivals towards bankruptcy, allowing him to buy them out at knock-down prices.

By the time of the American Civil War, Vanderbilt was on the brink of total monopoly over steamship travel between New York and Boston. He even loaned his biggest and fastest vessels to the Union Navy for their pursuit of Confederate commerce raiders.

On August 20, 1866, just a few hours after President Andrew Johnson signed the historic Proclamation of Peace, he was also signing off on an enormous bounty as a reward for Vanderbilt's assistance during the conflict.

OUTRAGEOUS WEALTH With even more money in his vaults, Vanderbilt looked for his next source of outrageous wealth. It didn't take him long to grasp the importance rail travel. Before long, he controlled all the tracks, trains and rolling stock between New York and Chicago. From there, he began to play the markets.

Regularly risking vast sums of money in order to reap quick rewards, Vanderbilt slowly began to grow into the most dominant force on the stock exchange. He taught himself how to manipulate stock prices and shift unimaginable amounts of money between companies, all the while channelling more dollars into his own personal fortune.

In 1869, Wall Street was on the verge of panic. Vanderbilt moved to arrest the potential meltdown by buying up companies on the verge of failure and pumping millions of dollars into them, then flooding the market with shares in his own railroad.

His motivation was nothing to do with rescuing the US economy, it was purely down to greed and the desire to scupper the plans of a sworn enemy – Jay Gould – who was attempting to corner the gold market.

At first glance, Vanderbilt's actions in 1869 had made him look like a hero.

But on closer inspection, his bitter rivalry with Gould triggered the original Black Friday and left hundreds of investors and businesses utterly ruined. There was only

The Commodore cut an impressive figure throughout his life

one significant winner from Black Friday – and that was Vanderbilt himself.

No one really knows just how much Vanderbilt profited from his battle with Gould. Nor does anyone know how he escaped investigation when others were hauled down for much lesser roles in one of Wall Street's darkest days.

Following Black Friday, he continued to play the markets, bullying and dominating in his usual style. He fathered 13 children, giving each of them a business of their own, yet cutting them off if they showed signs of failure. He also made a point of being ferociously uncharitable.

The one occasion when he did give money away was as a donation to build a university in Nashville in 1873. It still remains today, named, as the agreement always stated it should, ‘Vanderbilt University'.

When Vanderbilt died on January 4, 1877, at the age of 82, he owned about one eighth of all the money in the USA - $105m. It may not sound like a colossal sum, but, in today's terms, it equates to around $2,333,296,875.

Not bad for a boy who could just about read and write, and taught himself maths as he ferried passengers across a harbour.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

didn't wear sheep's clothing

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‘Texodus' – movement of New The US jobs boom is being driven by factors that may leave Wall Street in the shadow of southern States

by DARREN PARKIN

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Ups and downs: things are changing on Wall Street

HOP on the famous Number 4 train on the Lexington Avenue Line somewhere between the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, and you’re guaranteed to be engulfed in the bustle of swarms of workers either going in or heading out of one of the world’s fastest-moving financial districts.

As any seasoned trader will tell you, though, things aren’t quite the same as they used to be.

The enigmatic Wall Street Station has been teeming with sharply-dressed financial experts since it first opened in 1905, and their presence has been unrelenting for more than a century.

Something, however, is definitely changing.

BANKRUPTCY Lehman Brothers had been one of the great financial houses on the world trading stage, operating for more than 150 years before ignominiously filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008. Its gung-ho approach and unnecessary risk-taking during the subprime mortgage crisis saw its wealthy clients simply turn their backs and walk away as the once towering leviathan of the New York Stock Exchange crumbled.

It’s a curious notion. Some might say unthinkable, but, at the end of the day, it’s entirely accurate. Wall Street – once the centre of the financial world – is facing something of an exodus.

In recent months, the US jobs market has experienced something of a resurgence. Particularly so in the financial sector. Intriguingly, however, these opportunities in the world of finance aren’t appearing where people might immediately expect.

Instead of helping to swell the platforms along the Lexington Avenue Line, the jobs are being created in – and also slowly shifting to – Arizona and Texas.

York's money people under way

Financial home on the range? You don’t need a building in Manhattan Although New York still accounts for almost one in ten of those positions, Texas has now replaced it as the state with the largest number of sector jobs.

Arizona is now in the ascendancy, and the likelihood is that it will top both New York and Texas over the next three to four years.

Despite being largely desert, and sharing a border with, in some people’s eyes, a seemingly ‘troublesome neighbour’ in Mexico, the home of the Grand Canyon and the mighty Colorado river is also the state where jobs in the finance sector grew faster than anywhere else in the USA. A general population growth, and an impressive pool of university graduates from the state’s excellent educational hubs has coupled with some top companies being drawn to Arizona’s affordability.

This has created a perfect climate for expanding organisations like USAA, Charles Schwab and State Farm to relocate around the new financial

epicentre of Phoenix.

Last year, State Farm took on an extra 2,000 staff in Arizona, and has projected to double that number of recruits by the end of this year. USAA (an insurance and banking firm catering largely for military families) hired more than 550 new people in 2016. They too are looking to increase that number by the end of 2017.

Grant Pilton, a 43-year-old insurance specialist, says it all makes sense. “Arizona ticks a hell of a lot of boxes both for companies like the ones I work for, and for people too – this is a lifestyle choice that an awful lot of professionals like myself in this sector will find an easy decision to make.

“Arizona is now on the radar for many of these companies and, if or when the time comes for them to make the move away from London, places like Phoenix will have established themselves as the centre of commerce for the USA and, potentially, the world.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Theories abound as to the science behind this new near-migration. Some observers claim it does little more than merely reflect the population trend of the US which currently sees the ‘sun belt states’ of the west and south growing at a quicker pace than the north. Others will say it is more driven by expansion in the markets of investment advice, consumer lending, and even insurance jobs over the seemingly stagnant sectors of trading and securities which are dominated by New York.

“It’s all about trying to have as little interaction with the real world as possible, and conducting your life from behind a computer screen – and that’s why everyone in my business is starting to look at moving to Arizona,” says one Wall Street insider.

“Phoenix is where it’s at now.”

The figures back this up. According to Gay Meyer, vice-president of human resources for USAA, a leading banking and insurance company, financial firms are beginning to take advantage of the fact they can be located anywhere in the age of internet banking.

“There is simply very little requirement for anyone to have to go into a bank anymore,” she explains.

“You don’t need a building in the middle of Manhattan – you can be based anywhere you feel is best for your company and your employees.

The days of the ‘we need to be in New York or Chicago’ mentality are gone.”

America under Donald Trump is experiencing a better economic recovery than had been anticipated.

Driven by low interest rates, the demand for home loans and credit cards is up, as is consumer spending.

Those factors, together with an underlying confidence unseen for years, go hand-in-hand with a boost in the number of jobs.

In fact, over the last financial year, jobs in insurance and finance grew by almost two per cent – that’s on a par with the levels experienced before the global financial crisis.

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Tax laws making Maltese cross The peace of the sun-baked Mediterranean island is being disturbed by grumblings from European business leaders keen to see Valletta come clean over tax schemes

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ON THE SUNNY island of Malta, a dark financial cloud is starting to appear.

Domestic companies in Malta must pay 35 percent of their profits to the government, yet international businesses who domicile their accounts on the island can enjoy the benefits of a corporation tax that rarely exceeds five percent.

Its bafflingly-complicated system somehow allows shareholders to receive a tax rebate that tots up to about 80 percent of the business rate they pay.

SCANDALOUS “The average business rate in the EU is 22 percent – that's acceptable, but 35 percent for the Maltese compared to the tiny fraction that the foreign businesses must pay – it is scandalous,” says one Maltese resident, a graphic designer.

From the lively pubs of Valletta, to the quiet restaurants of Gozo, there are business owners who are all in the same predicament — being forced to watch overseas companies enjoy tax breaks that seem barely legal, while hard-working Maltese citizens are having to pay over the odds.

It's been going on for years, but in stoic Maltese fashion, they've just got on with it rather than complaining about it.

SILENT SUFFERING There is, however, some hope on the horizon. This silent suffering may be about to come to an end as word has got out about the plight of Malta's small businesses.

An anonymous tip-off to a German finance minister has not only opened up a dodgy can of tax worms, it's also sparked one of the biggest financial investigations in German or Maltese history.

When Norbert Walter-Borjans – finance minister for North RhineWestphalia - found a USB stick in his post earlier this year, he wasn't quite prepared for the mountain of damning information it held on more than 70,000 companies registered in Malta.

Investigations into 150,000 documents appear to show that thousands of companies are taking advantage of Malta's taxation laws Around 2,000 of them were German corporations, with many of those from his own state – the most populous in Germany.

As he delved further into the files, WalterBorjans' suspicions of tax fraud began to grow. Within weeks, he had enough evidence to set the alarm bells ringing in Berlin where the files saw jaws dropping in the Bundestag.

By May of this year, Bundestag investigators launched probes into the 2,000 German companies registered in Malta and their alleged attempts to dodge tax laws.

“There are branches of big German corporations on this long list,” confirmed Walter-Borjans.

PANAMA IN EUROPE “Our investigations with global contacts will not be steered off course in their campaign against tax evasion and won't be intimidated – for a long time there have been indications that there is a kind of Panama in Europe.”

The phrase “Panama in Europe” sent shockwaves through the corridors of the island's ancient government building in

Valletta, but it was nothing compared to the label of “pirate base of tax avoidance in Europe”. This accusation, for the Maltese parliament at least, was a step too far.

Malta's ruling politicians are particularly irked by other EU countries pointing fingers at their overseas business tax practises after several members began rounding on the tiny nation.

WEAKNESS A handful of their European neighbours have publicly stated that Malta's system damages their own budgets – something Malta claims is more of a weakness within the EU, rather than a fault within its own methodology.

A recent report commissioned by MEPs found Malta's tax procedures had allowed multinationals to avoid paying more than €14bn between 2012 and 2015.

Malta is making few apologies as it defends its tax laws. It's also making fewer friends. Least of all its allies in the current climate is the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.

LETTER-BOX SUBSIDIARIES Despite having to explain his own comportment as Luxembourg's prime minister, he has insisted the EU should do more to prevent companies setting up ‘letter-box subsidiaries' in other countries purely to enjoy a softer tax experience.

A series of investigations into 150,000 documents appear to show that not only are thousands of companies taking advantage of Malta's taxation laws, but that Valletta itself now has links with firms associated with Italian and Russian mafia.

Successive prime ministers have argued that Malta has nothing to hide, insisting that its continued registry of companies and associated tax breaks is vital for the EU's smallest state to have any chance of thriving in Europe.

Its current government has even accused other nations of laying siege to Malta to tear off their own chunk of the island's takings.

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Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Fighting against quicksand of The deployment of fiscal initiatives and the promotion of inclusive trade policies is an escape from the low-growth trap, reports CATHERINE L. MANN FOR THE past five years the global economy has been in the grip of w growth, stuck at around three percent per year.

Persistent growth shortfalls have weighed on future output expectations and reduced current spending and potential output gains.

Around the world, private investment has been weak, public investment has slowed, and global trade growth has collapsed. This has limited the improvements in employment, labour productivity and wages needed to support sustainable gains in living standards.

Overall, a slowdown in structural

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policy ambition and policy incoherence have weighed on business dynamism, trapped resources in unproductive firms, weakened financial institutions and continue to undermine productivity growth.

IMPLEMENTATION The OECD has argued that fiscal, monetary and structural policies need to be deployed comprehensively and collectively for economies to grow sufficiently to make good on promises to their citizens.

The OECD’s latest Economic Outlook indicates that fiscal initiatives could catalyse private economic activity and push the global economy to a rate

of around 3.5 percent by 2018.

Durable exit from the low-growth trap depends on policy choices beyond those of the monetary authorities – that is, of fiscal and structural, including trade policies – as well as on concerted and effective implementation.

Collective fiscal action undertaken by all countries, including a more expansionary stance than planned in many countries in Europe, would support domestic and global growth even for those economies.

By virtue of specific circumstances, different countries need to consolidate their fiscal positions or pursue a more neutral stance.

Some might argue that there is no space for such fiscal initiatives, given the heavy public debt burden in many economies. Following five years of intense fiscal consolidation, debt-toGDP ratios in most advanced countries have flattened.

It is past time to focus on expanding the denominator – GDP growth.

The current conjuncture of extraordinarily accommodative monetary policy with very low interest rates opens a window of opportunity to deploy fiscal initiatives.

Fiscal space has been created by lower interest payments on rolledover debt, which also increases gauges of market access and those of debt sustainability.

On average, OECD economies could deploy deficit-financed fiscal initiatives for three to four years, while still leaving debt-to-GDP ratios unchanged in the long term.

A front-loaded effort would possibly allow deficit finance to taper sooner rather than later — and put the debt-toGDP ratio on a sustainable downward

path. The key is to deploy the right kind of fiscal initiatives.

Those that support demand in the short-run and supply in the long-run, and address not just growth challenges but also inequality concerns.

These include soft investments in education and R&D, along with hard investment in public infrastructures.

SUFFERING Such fiscal initiatives would improve outcomes for demand and supply potential even more for economies suffering from long-term unemployment, when undertaken collectively, and when fiscal initiatives are complemented by country-specific structural policies put together in a coherent package.

The mix will be different for different countries, but there is certainly something for everyone.

Against this backdrop, reviving trade growth through better policies would help to push the global economy out of the low-growth trap, as well as support revived productivity growth.

Trade growth is projected to

pick-up, but only to a rate on a par with global output growth rather than growing at twice the speed as we have enjoyed over the last few decades.

This nonetheless remains far below the multiple of two enjoyed over the last few decades.

This sluggish trade growth compared to historical experience shaves some 0.2 percentage point from total factor productivity growth – which may seem minor, but is meaningful given the growth of 0.5% per year during the post- crisis period.

Some argue that slowing globalization would be beneficial, but protectionism and inevitable trade retaliation would be more likely to offset the effects of the expected fiscal initiatives on domestic and global growth, raising prices, harming living standards and leaving countries in a worsened fiscal position.

Trade protectionism shelters some jobs, but worsens prospects and lowers well- being for many others. In many OECD countries, more than 25 percent of jobs depend on foreign demand.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

low growth

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Using window of opportunity continued from previous page

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Because technological change is an even greater job threat than globalization, policymakers need to create an environment where change is an opportunity, not a threat.

POLICY PACKAGES The implementation of the structural policy packages will create more job opportunities, increase business dynamism, promote successful reallocation and enhance policies to ensure that gains are better shared.

Fortunately, the country-specific policy packages that make fiscal initiatives more effective in promoting demand growth and supply potential also help to make growth more inclusive.

The transition path to a more balanced policy set and higher sustainable growth involves financial risks. But so does the status quo dependence on extraordinary monetary policy.

Pricing distortions in financial markets abound. Yield curves are remaining fairly flat, with negative interest rates.

Pricing of credit risk has narrowed even as issuance of riskier bonds has increased.

Financial distortions challenge bank profitability Real estate prices continue to advance in many markets, even in the face of attempted tempering by macroprudential measures.

Expectations in currency markets are on edge, as evidenced by high measures of currency volatility.

These financial distortions and risks expose vulnerable balance sheets of firms in emerging markets, and challenge bank profitability as well as the long-term stability of pension schemes in the more advanced economies.

Fiscal initiatives and trade and structural policies, as outlined above, should revive expectations for faster and more inclusive growth, thus allowing monetary policy to move toward a more neutral stance in the

US, and possibly in other countries.

The risk of a growing divergence in monetary policy stances in the major economies over the next two years could be a new source of financial market tensions even as growth picks up.

This will put a premium on collective action taken by countries to revive growth in tandem.

Policymakers should closely examine fiscal space; low interest rates enable many countries to boost hard and soft infrastructure and other growth-enhancing initiatives.

Avoiding trade pitfalls, coupled with social measures to better share the gains from globalization and technological change, are key policy priorities.

Using the window of opportunity created by monetary policy and following through on fiscal and structural measures should raise growth expectations and create the necessary momentum for the global economy to escape the low-growth trap. *Catherine L. Mann is Chief Economist of the Paris-based OECD.

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Cryptocurrency's strange odyssey In 2009, Bitcoin was born; 18 years later, Satoshi Nakamoto’s brainchild has become a game-changing reality that has made fortunes for some. But is there still time to get in on the act?

HAL WILLIAMS reports IN OCTOBER 2008, a person – or perhaps a group of people – published a paper on the Cryptography Mailing List under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, entitled Bitcoin: A Peer-To-Peer Electronic Cash System. Three months later, in January 2009, Nakamoto released the software that brought about the single biggest change to our monetary system since traders moved from seashells and beads to coins and banknotes.

Cryptography is the process of converting legible information into an almost uncrackable code, to track purchases and transfers. Cryptocurrency was a natural follow-through of cryptography. While speculation about Nakamoto's true identity, whereabouts and worth continues to obsess some, others

have wisely moved on to speculation of a different kind. Bitcoin and some of its fellow cryptocurrencies have made blue chip stocks seem tame in contrast with their stratospheric growth in value.

Take the tale of Norwegian Kristopher

Koch, who bought $27 of Bitcoin in 2009.

His story has taken on the aura of an urban legend, and it has been used loosely and repeated Chinese Whisper-style by barflies and Bitcoin barometer-watchers for shock value, schadenfreude or emphasis.

Koch, the story goes, forgot about his impulse investment, made as a student while writing a thesis on encryption. When he got wind of Bitcoin's meteoric rise in value years later, he fumbled around trying to remember the password to his encrypted “wallet” (take a moment to feel for the poor man). When he finally worked it out, he discovered his paltry initial investment was worth $886,000 (the value changes according to the date each report is published; this one comes from The Guardian newspaper in 2015).

WHO IS SATOSHI NAKAMOTO? THE BOTTOM LINE, of course, is that no one knows who Nakamoto is – but that doesn't mean that no one has an opinion.

He launched bitcoin with his famous white paper in 2008; in 2011, he vanished (if an invisible person, or entity, can vanish).

He slipped into the shadows just as the project was taking off, his forum posts and e-mails evaporating into the ether.

His identity, his status, his financial worth and his whereabouts may never be known, but here are some of the facts, fallacies and theories that can be gleaned from the net.

UK Business Insider believes Nakamoto has a million Bitcoins; you do the math on the dollar / pound / euro worth of that, but be sure to get the latest value, and ensure your calculator has an extra-wide screen to handle all the zeroes. He is said to have spent almost none of them.

The cryptomuse website claims that the American NSA (National Security Agency) was able to the use the “writer invariant” method of stylometry to compare Satoshi's writings with writing samples from around the world.

By finding the 50 most common words used in Satoshi's texts, the NSA was able to break down his text into 5,000-word chunks and analyse them to find their frequency. So they did that, and, um, they know who it is. But they aren't saying.

(If you're wondering why the NSA would care, apparently the Obama administration was concerned that Satoshi 26

was an agent of Russia or China — that Bitcoin might be “weaponised”.)

The New Yorker reported that Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright had confirmed he was Nakamoto, after reports in Wired and Gizmodo speculated as much. He later retracted the claim.

Many believe that Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym, and the name can be broken down into discrete segments: Satoshi means “quick witted”, Naka means “inside, or relationship”, while “ Moto” can mean “origin”, or “foundation”.

Larry Kim speculated on the Inc.com website, furnishing plausible reasons, that Nakamoto might be a) a woman b) dead c) a group of companies (Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, and Motorola) and / or d) the CIA. Some leading candidates include: Australian Craig Wright; A 64-year-old Japanese-American named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto – he even has the name, but he denied it was him; Nick Szabo, an American who was involved in the bitcoin project; Hal Finney (deceased) the first person to receive a bitcoin transaction Finnish economic sociologist Vili Lehdonvirta; Irish student Michael Clear.

• • • • • •

Google “Bitcoin value 2009 vs 2017” and in the first page of 3,490,000 results comes up with headings that read, “$100 of Bitcoin in 2010 is worth $75 million today” and, confusingly, “If you'd bought $1000 of Bitcoin in 2010, you'd be worth $35m”.

Those wildly different value projections show not only the cryptocurrency's explosive worth, but also its volatility.

Bitcoin is harder to pin down than an electron, and its values are frequently listed in ranges: “2017: from roughly $960 to $4300” says one website.

Koch's story has been told and retold, over the years, but the central truth to take away is that Bitcoin's rise in value has been meteoric, if difficult to pinpoint. In April 2016, for instance, it was changing hands for $460; in October 2017, that figure had soared to $5,243. Compare that with the price of gold over the same period; $1,266 in April 2016, $1,261 In 2017.

When Bitcoin hit its all-time high, breezing past the previous zenith of $5,013.91, it broke a record it set a little over a month before -- bringing the year-todate increase in value to 424 percent.

Bitcoin is still rated as the top dog of the market, but it isn't alone in the cryptocurrency market. Some of its competitors are held in lower esteem thanks to Bitcoin's exhaustive and time-consuming mining process and blockchain security. Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, NEM and Dash have all shown good performance, and while Ethereum is tipped by many as the champion in

Bitcoin isn't alone in the cryptocurrency market the wings it has the unenviable record of seeing its value plunge from $317 to just 10 cents during the early part of 2017, as reported by TV news outlet CNBC. And that happened in just one day. It gives a heavy hint that volatility can outweigh stellar growth for some potential investors, and security is not one of the benefits of cryptos.

There are now more than 900 cryptocurrencies available on the internet, used for everything from purchasing commodities to bots, and Russia is reportedly launching its own cryptocurrency. “Truly, we have barely scratched the surface for the uses of cryptography and cryptocurrency,” says Vincent Jacques, co-founder and CEO of ChainTrade.

“The rise of Bitcoin has seen a surge in other cryptocurrencies such as Ether, Litecoin, Ripples and thousands of others,” agrees Arjun Bhuwalka, Business and Advisory for India-based global research, analytics and advisory firm Aranca. “As some of them see greater adoption, their usage and constraints will also be better

understood. In the long-run, there will be consolidation as some of these currencies will evolve and still exist, while many will close down.”

Bitcoin's standing has been boosted twice in recent months, legitimised by a decision from Japan's Financial Services Agency to accept it as legal tender in September, and strengthened before that by a “hard fork” split of Bitcoin into Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash in August.

The split came about to combat high transaction fees and put a limit on the currency to deter larger “mining” blocks.

On-going tensions about the decentralised digital payments system are expected to create yet another Bitcoin network split in November; watch this space.

The consolidations that have come about have failed to make the cryptocurrency invulnerable to fraud or sudden shocks: Chinese Bitcoin trading platform GBL disappeared without trace in 2013, and along with it went US$5m of Bitcoin, with subscribers unable to access their digital wallets. In September this year, Chinese regulators banned cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs (initial coin offerings). At the time of going to press, there was speculation that trading in China would recommence soon.

“Some countries, like Switzerland, Singapore and Estonia, are vying to become hubs for digital currency transactions,” says Bhuwalka. He believes this is having “a cascading effect” on financial institutions, governments and

continued on next page

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

from bits to bots ... and riches?

27

continued from previous page regulators as they are “forced to figure out ways to adapt cryptocurrencies, for the fear of being left behind”.

That fear begs the question poised on countless lips: have we missed the Bitcoin boat, or is there still time to clamber aboard? Could buying a Bitcoin fraction in 2017 make you rich in five years, or ten?

The answer depends on which institution you ask.

Brendan Holt Dunn, CEO of Holdun Family Office, based in the Bahamas, said his company's conservative style of asset management meant he couldn't advise cryptocurrency as a good investment for his clients.

“Cryptocurrency is very risky at the moment, it's not something that would fit with our investment profile,” he said.

“It's very in vogue, but that doesn't mean it's a good investment.” Mr Dunn added, however, that blockchain was “extremely valuable”, and something that “could be used in a lot of other areas”.

There are almost three million Bitcoin transactions waiting to be confirmed.

Only seven transactions a second can be processed, so – even with an unlikely lull in applications -- it would take five full days to clear the backlog. Bitcoin is still listed by those in the know as the best bet for investors, and with a finite amount of Bitcoin available – the ceiling is set at 21 million, with about 15 million already in circulation – some believe the real rush may be yet to come.

Blockchain – an expanding list of records, called blocks, linked and secured by cryptography -- provides safer

transactions, and bypasses fee-collecting entities, with no single entity controlling the system, or entry into it. In a recent report compiled by the IFC (Internal Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group), blockchain is described as “a database ledger that functions like a distributed network. It is often referred to as a distributed ledger that can register blocks of cryptographically-secure, tamperproof data with members of a network”.

IFC report authors Marina Niforos, Vuaya Ramachandran and Thomas Rehermann say the technology is “in early stages of development and will need to overcome serious challenges and risks, both technical and regulatory, before it achieves widespread adoption”.

But despite these misgivings, from its murky genesis as a cyber currency largely used in drug and arms deals on rogue Deep Web sites such as Silk Road, Bitcoin has emerged into the market as viable, durable and profitable. Is cryptocurrency really any less bankable than, say, the pound or the greenback?

Britain left the gold standard in 1931, and no national government currently uses it. The real worth of banknotes is based on a government diktat, or fiat, that the currency must be accepted as a means of payment – and the mutual acceptance of anyone involved in any trade that this piece of paper is worth that many bags or sugar, or gallons of petrol. Is Bitcoin any less worthy of our trust? Tesla and Microsoft, along with Japan, accept Bitcoin as legal alternative tender, and are not deterred by its early links to drug deals and moneylaundering.

“Cryptocurrencies are meant to be decentralised, secure and independent of central banks or monetary authorities,” says Arjun Bhuwalka, “but the anonymity it offers, coupled with lack of regulatory control, has restricted its usage and legal acceptance. “(Cryptocurrencies) provide anonymity, they are a preferred mode of payment for illegal transactions from drug trafficking to arms sales to ransomware.

These can also be used for illegal purposes such as tax evasion, bribery, terror financing. The anonymity feature makes it difficult to catch the perpetrators. If the financial system is unable to prevent illicit use of cryptocurrencies, this will be its Achilles' heel.”

Geoff McCabe is a Costa Ricabased cryptocurrency blogger (www. cryptomorrow.com) who runs an ICO -- an unregulated (and controversial) means of crowdfunding via use of cryptocurrency which can be a source of capital for startup companies. (So far this year, ICOs have

Ethereum is tipped by many as the champion in the wings 28

The volatility of cryptocurrencies makes it difficult to pin down day-to-day values raised more than $3 billion, according to Coinschedule.com) McCabe points to a new development in cryptocurrency, the “Atomic Swap”, which enables people to change from one cryptocurrency to another using a decentralized, open-source exchange, rather than one can be controlled by governments.

“What this means for ordinary people is that, ultimately, they will be able to use any cryptocurrency they want to buy something, and the receiver can receive in their favourite coin during the transaction.”

Only coins that can do fast transactions can really be part of this -- sorry Bitcoin.

So what does that mean for business?

“Branding and user-experience will become far more important than they are today,” says McCabe. “When you can make purchases with any crypto you want, people will break into tribes who have their favourite, and they'll use the ones that have the best wallet that makes it fun and easy.

“The technology of the coin becomes less important and the marketing and user experience becomes paramount.”

Caleb Chen, of www.blockexplorer. com, the first Bitcoin blockchain, says the future of cryptocurrency use is “undoubtedly bright”.

“The promise of financial systems that operate internationally, and with less friction -- thanks to the power of the internet -- is currently being realised,” he says.

“Whether or not specific cryptocurrencies will wax or wane in an investing sense remains to be seen.

“However, the underlying blockchain technology will always continue to grow.”

Chen says the rise of cryptocurrencies mirrors the development of the internet “which could or could not be indicative of a bubble bursting in the future”.

With guidance that would apply as well to the racetrack or the casino, Chen urges prospective investors not to invest more than they can afford to lose. There is no FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) for cryptocurrency, he cautions -- but he is optimistic about the future viability of the system.

“Either way, we definitely haven't missed the boat,” he says. “If the financial promise of cryptocurrency is realised, the price will rise much, much more in the future.”

And, of course, speculation and investment with the various currencies themselves is only one potentially profitable aspect of the emerging field; companies and entrepreneurs are finding and creating business niches.

Sheryl Carr is the founder of UKbased Quid Systems, which developed a cloud-based point-of-sale system, QuidPOS, which has a built-in currency converter register with a real-time price-discovery mechanism to accept any money, including cryptocurrencies.

“The emerging markets of Latin America and India have the most to gain in economic growth through understanding and adopting the benefits of cryptocurrencies,” says Carr. “We wanted to build a tool that provided more of a transparent transaction between the merchant and customer, and so we focused on this niche creating a currency converter point of sale.”

Business Vision has spoken with experts, entrepreneurs, advisors and financial experts in researching this article, and all have their unique take on a burgeoning and confusing world.

Despite a 2011 prediction in Forbes magazine that Bitcoin was dead, or was about to die, it's been a wild ride, and one that shows no signs of stopping.

The cryptocurrency market is expanding and evolving, that much is certain. To the dismay of would-be investors, and the consternation of watchdogs and financial institutions, that certainty is the only one we have to work with.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PixieMe / Shutterstock.com

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Royal has an important role in WHILE most of the world’s monarchs have a limited role in the financial development of their countries, the same cannot be said of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI. M6, as he is colloquially and affectionately known to many of his subjects, is a go-ahead, hands-on kind of ruler with a reputation for random acts of generosity and a nose for astute investment. In the mid-1990s, he proposed the establishment of Free Zones in Morocco, and, in 1999, the first one came into being. Mohammed VI donated 300 hectares of land in Tangier to give the embryonic project the necessary boost it required to get moving.

FOREIGN INVESTMENT The aim was to attract foreign investment to Morocco, provide local employment, and add a dynamic element to the North African kingdom’s international business profile, explains Olivier Gattel, CEO and founder of IGC Consulting.

His private firm is one of the main points of entry for international investors, having been literally “in the zone” since the project’s inception.

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“The idea (of the zones) was to attract the automotive and aerospace industries to Morocco,” says Gattel, from his swish third-floor office suite inside the Export Zone of Tangier, one of five free zones operating in the greater city area.

That bid has succeeded, with Renault occupying the entirety of one of the zones – Parc Meloussa – to manufacture its vehicles. Fellow French automotive giant, the Citroën-PSA group, is represented in another of the industrial parks, mainly for the manufacture of wiring looms and components.

But it isn’t just the motoring and aeronautics industries benefitting from the five-year, tax-free status.

The traditional textile industry is well represented, mainly for car upholstery and furnishings, as are electronics, and there is large-scale manufacture of products such as composite piping.

Tangier is a mere 14 km from Europe, and home to the biggest and deepest port on the African continent.

Ships and containers heading eastward to Europe via the Straits of Gibraltar

The King is affectionately known as ‘M6’

are obliged by maritime law to hug the Moroccan coastline before doing a U-turn and nipping back to Algeciras in Spain. Morocco, ever quick to recognise an opportunity, craftily situated Tangier Med – that port of “biggest and deepest” fame – just before the turning point to Algeciras, and Europe.

TEMPTATION While Moroccans living abroad can take advantage of the tax benefits, their compatriots living in their home country can’t – but the perks for international investors keen to gain a toe-hold on African soil via the Free Zones are many, and tempting.

Companies are exempt from taxes on dividends, partnership shares and corporate tax for the first five years (followed by a reduced rate of 8.75 percent for the next 15 years).

The exemption extends to all registration taxes and stamp duties, services and value-added tax. The repatriation of foreign earnings is also tax-free, and foreign companies can apply for subsidies from the Moroccan government in the form of financial assistance for the acquisition of land and construction.

The zones are jointly controlled

by TMSA (Tangier Mediterranean Special Agency) – a go-between organisation representing the state in the construction, maintenance, commercialisation, development and promotion of the free zones.

MAJOR CONSIDERATION The zones provide employment for about 47,000 workers. With earnings at a rough average of €250 a month per 44-hour working week, the sweat from those brows plays a leading role in the success story.

Low-cost labour is (has been, and probably always will be) a major consideration for foreign investors bent on manufacturing. With turnover almost tripling since the first zone was established, it’s a factor worthy of consideration.

Gattel insists this isn’t exploitation.

Instead, he says living costs in Morocco are simply lower than some countries.

Morocco's free-zone initiative

Tangier is a mere 14 km from Europe, and home to the biggest port on the African continent. situated, flanking the international airport and looking out across the Straits of Gibraltar which gave Morocco its strategic position in the shipping routes.

LIMITED IMPEDANCE The free zones are counted as international territory. There are Customs offices at entry and exit points, though foot traffic passes without unnecessary impedance.

Within the Tangier Free Zone, there are shiny, modern office blocks of black and silver, all tinted windows and grand entrances, just metres from the form-follows-function slab sides of warehouses and factories.

Gattel owns the business centre we sit in, and offers consulting services and advice as well as offices for rent. He schmoozes with ambassadors, who are keen to keep a finger on this pulse of Morocco’s financial heartbeat.

“The British, French, Spanish

ambassadors - they’ve all visited to find out more,” he says, adding tongue-incheek: “It’s nice here. A good standard of living, good weather, great views.

“And it’s 14 kilometres to Europe as the crow flies.”

MOROCCAN FACT FILE

• • • • • •

About 32 million people live in Morocco The capital city of Morocco is Rabat, but the largest city is Casablanca Moroccans are mostly of Berber and Arabic decent Berber people have been living in North Africa for centuries The official languages of Morocco are Berber and Arabic. The Moroccan Arabic dialects are called Darija. French, Spanish and English are also spoken There are two small Spanishcontrolled areas, Ceuta and Melilla

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

“Romania used to be the lowcost employment option before its absorption into the CE,” he explains, flanked in his office by the flags of Morocco, France and Europe. “Now, it’s Morocco.”

The first four years were rough ones for the zone pioneers, but international users of the free zones have invested more than one billion euros over the years.

The zones have acquired more surface area, too, now jointly comprising about 350 hectares. Rental, lease or purchase of lots and facilities is possible, with industries grouped into generic “suburbs” of zones where possible, for reasons both logistical and logical.

Gattel, a native of Savoie, has been in his consulting role for 12 years, and says the zone in which we sit was the prototype for a burgeoning program.

The Export Zone of Tangier is well

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FILM REVIEW

Blade Runners and replicants, Can a sequel ever be an equal? Blade Runner 2049 is the litmus test; BV movie critic JOHN MARINUS plunges into movie history and a depiction of a dystopian future

REMEMBER ME ... ?

“I have done questionable things...” Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, meanest replicant ever to plunge his head clean through a wall.

Could the arch villain from the 1982 Blade Runner ever have a badguy equal? Blade Runner 2049 has met with universal praise from critics and fans, although box office returns initially disappointed 32

A CATHARTIC monologue pairs well with an unrelenting downpour, while nothing beats a genial powdering of snow for finally hanging loose and making peace with the bullet hole in your gut.

Both work as resolution, just shades apart. When a Londoner wants to project pathos onto a cityscape he adds rain, a Montréalais adds snow. Blade runner 2049 revisits the city of Ridley Scott's 1982 Original, just paints it with a different palette. Los Angeles 2049 is indeed a colder place: sterile rather than putrid; with nothing left to rot, this world can merely crumble and rust.

The grey corporate ziggurats don't so much loom as stand dormant; only through the cracks do we see a residual neon glow, as the deluge laps tauntingly at the massive seawall. There is a glacial weight to this film to match its pace.

Agent K (Ryan Gosling) is a LAPD nexus-9 replicant, a new generation of synthetic humans, tasked with the hunting down of rogue old model replicants. Agent K stumbles on a mystery that eventually leads him to Deckard (Harrison Ford) – the central character and eponymous Blade Runner of the original 1982 movie – and subsequently the replicant resistance.

His duty is to follow orders, not to feel or think, a fact hammered home by his boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), and by the post traumatic baseline test, part polygraph, part word-association interrogation based on the Voight-Kampff test of the original.

A milky-eyed Jared Leto chews the scenery a bit but manages to convey all we need in an arch-villain in his portrayal of Niander Wallace, the replicant magnate who supplanted Dr Eldon Tyrell, and who aspires to be something more celestial with a single dense soliloquy. Wallace's assistant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is K's meticulous nemesis.

The film feigns a heart in the character of Joi (Ana de Armas), as her voice sweetly welcomes K home. Joi is the consolation

sleepwalkers and sequels

Ryan Gosling represents a new generation of Blade Runners

Image: Warner Bros

contrasts of dystopia to explore the nature of authenticity, of autonomy, of identity, of meaning – and failing that, to provide consolation in a desolate world.

The Blade Runner films are not only informed, they are just as much a part of that tradition of sleepwalkers and replicants, hollow men and holograms.

CRITICAL RECEPTION The viewing public was guaranteed a decent film, yet the critical reception of Blade Runner 2049 was one of relief – and its poor box office performance was seen as a let-down. Sequel fatigue is a common condition: for years the highest grossing films have been either sequels or franchises, and the elitist spits out the word Hollywood as a metonymy for all that is wrong with the artless entertainment industry.

The elitists have a point: Hollywood is an industry, and the bloated gatekeepers are financially, rather than artistically, bound.

Their primary concern is what sells, and that makes them rather conservative, banking on things that resemble things that have sold before. This has also led, more insidiously, to the torrent of passable “safe” films: demographic pandering-by-thenumbers, relying on formula and cliché.

These films can still be well crafted, like the Marvel instalment Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2; or they can be The Fate Of The Furious, The Big Sick or Home Again, Despicable Me 3 or Boss Baby.

Some are decent films, but they are all safe investments, engineered with varying levels of craft to cater to a demographic and market share, and no one will be talking about them a year from now.

Efforts like Franklin Leonard's Blacklist, an annual survey which shines a light on worthy original screenplays floating round Hollywood, are part of the solution.

Blacklist has resulted in a number of gems like Arrival and Manchester by the Sea, but they are still few and far between.

Independence Day did not rob some wholly novel masterpiece of a spot; if anything, it just pushed back a year some equally formulaic drizzle like Geostorm.

Lack of original stories has never been the harbinger of cultural stagnation, and bemoaning it is a lazy and petulant practice.

Culture endures through the regurgitative process called tradition, as art weathers fashion and popular demand.

Discerning? Yes. But not snobbish, because a film such as Blade Runner 2049 can still be made.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

K needs but she is a product, a hologram, programmed to be whatever you need her to be. You believe her: this isn't ambiguity so much as cognitive dissonance. You'll forgive her almost grotesque attempts at intimacy because it rings true. It's almost as if K really does have a significant other, a past, a purpose… but then we cut away to a shot of a towering neon billboard selling Joi. This is a real Blade Runner movie, with the same DNA as the 1982 Blade Runner, the cult classic for which Ridley Scott released a final cut in 2007 because he wouldn't sign-off on Warner Bros' Director's Cut. SAFE HANDS Did anyone really think Ridley Scott was going to let his work be treated like some popcorn-fodder cash cow like Independence Day or Jurassic World? We are in safe hands here: Hampton Fancher is back as screenwriter, Hans Zimmer's score soars (and is visited by the familiar synths and chimes of the original's score by Vangelis).

With films like Arrival, Enemy, and Incendies, Denis Villeneuve has proved himself not merely capable director but a serious filmmaker, and no one is going to ask cinematographer Roger A. Deakins to prove a damn thing.

The Blade Runner films are icons of filmmaking, but icons aren't all created equal. These films are great because the craft is in service to the art. If this all sounds preposterous that's because you are thinking of Star Wars: impressive façade with just enough heft to bear reference and sell merchandise.

The Blade Runners are something else.

They are the inheritors of a cine/literary tradition. There's the source material of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick (whose story Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? inspired the original Blade Runner film) and names like Aldous Huxley and Stanislaw Lem before him.

In films like Children Of Men, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris – all the way back to Metropolis and Rossum's Universal Robots – science fiction is the natural laboratory of the modernist project. These works use the heightened

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The modern business world Bureaucracy sticks in the craw of commerce, and has done for decades. Could there be a better way?

WHEN Britain first considered breaking away from the EU, the sentiment was galvanised by mounting frustration at the stumbling blocks placed in the way of commerce.

In Brussels, despite the impression of apathy towards Britain's needs, concerned politicians were keen to get to the bottom of the problem.

During discussions, two words stood out above all others: “red” and “tape”.

One man had a solution – Bavarian leader Edmund Stoiber. He picked up the challenge of his British associates and set out on a mission to ease the passage of European trade.

LEGISLATION MACHINE In his retirement speech, he lambasted the EU for being a “legislation machine”.

It all fell on deaf ears, as it had done for years.

Britain first bundled its way into the EEC's exclusive club once Charles de Gaulle – its unflinching jobsworth doorman appointed at the end of the Second World War – had hung up his kepi.

It found its way blocked in almost every direction. A nation of shopkeepers, maybe,

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The year 2010 was a dark one for British business: Whitehall passed an astonishing 3,506 new laws but it was fast becoming a nation of smart entrepreneurs trussed up like flies in a spider web of red tape.

For all Stoiber's good intentions, nothing changed. Seemingly needless legislation across the continent was not reduced. In fact, more was introduced.

The year 2010 was a dark one for British business. Whitehall passed an

astonishing 3,506 new laws – half of them were swept through under Labour's Gordon Brown before David Cameron's coalition came to power in May of that year – promising to “cut the legislative burden for business”.

A further 1,718 new laws were then introduced throughout the remainder of 2010, making an average of 14 new pieces of legislation every working day.

It was too much for many. Already in the grip of a recession, hundreds of enterprises went to the wall, as they were simply not able to keep up with legal compliance.

CATCH-22 This year, almost 300 small businesses were forced to cease operations purely because of new VAT rules that were brought in by the European Union with the express aim of curtailing huge web companies from exploring sales tax loopholes.

When Joseph Heller completed his masterpiece Catch-22, he could easily have been imagining a new metaphor for business in the modern age. Captain Yossarian might be any businessman, while

has got it all (red) taped

all governmental bodies could be played by Colonel Cathcart.

But does it really have to be this way?

Is there an alternative to the endless round of tail-chasing legislation that is so clearly despised by businesses?

ASIAN TIGERS Some of the celebrated Asian Tigers, or even economic models from South America, demonstrate that economies have been allowed to thrive by streamlining the red tape burden.

Bolivia, for instance, was once deemed to be the most paperwork-shackled country on earth. During the 1980s it had so many different levels of taxes that the economy temporarily collapsed, unable to process its own information.

After streamlining the system, backed up with some praiseworthy governance from the socialist Evo Morales, the country is now thriving.

The World Bank's much-respected

“Ease of Doing Business” indicator also shows an interesting correlation between countries bogged down with paperwork and those which enjoy smooth international trading.

The World Bank employs criteria such as the simplicity of paying taxes, as well as taken time to launch a business or acquire permits.

Taking top spot – a position it has held for a decade – is Singapore. Like New Zealand, which holds onto second place, the Asian business giant has dispensed with dozens of rules and regulations which it deemed a hindrance.

NAYSAYERS Singapore's leaders saw that by streamlining their bureaucracy they were able to attract industries which, in turn, enticed some of the world's top talent.

The government also took steps to remove any remaining red tape that might slow down the process that would allow

Ikars / Shutterstock.com

foreign employees to relocate.

But before there are further cries to gather wood for the resurrection of Stoiber's inferno, the evidence doesn't necessarily play into the hands of Euro naysayers.

South Korea and Hong Kong join Singapore and New Zealand in the top 20 countries that are a delight to do business with.

Bureaucratic nations such as Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden join sixthplaced UK and USA (seventh) in the top ten.

It would seem, to the World Bank at least, that excessive legislature isn't necessarily a huge drawback when it comes to commercial success.

An old adage says the only certainties in life are death and taxes, but perhaps we should add red tape to that maxim – then try to imagine how much more successful we could be without it.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

For years the EU has been lambasted for being a legislation machine

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Plus ça change: where time IN A WORLD driven by technological progress, unhurried comfort and timeless style have become statements of luxury, and you can depend on the Hotel du CapEden-Roc to preserve old-world elegance, luxury and style.

This is the one place that has not succumbed to the unrefined tastes of the nouveau riche: the recently arrivés are, of course, welcome to enjoy a stay at this temple of class and to celebrate their accomplishments amidst its understated opulence.

A sojourn in Antibes on the French Riviera will also surely contribute to a sense of style for those seeking to join that rarefied social stratum in which money is never mentioned, and good taste a sinequa-non.

By the way, arriving by helicopter is out of the question.

Pundits agree that the recent refurbishment of the 147-year-old property has left much improved -- and even more unchanged. Modern intrusions – minibars and television sets – are carefully stowed out of sight behind finely crafted wooden doors. The enlargement of the pool deck required the garden to be moved back about 10 metres. The job was tackled

A $70m renovation of the Hotel CapDu-Roc in Antibes has left intact the charm and style of yesteryear by numbering each plant and rock, and taking their coordinates, in order to ensure all was put pack precisely as it was.

Some of the hotel's more arcane house rules were changed as well. Now guests may settle their accounts with credit card payments. The hotel had become quite (in)famous for only accepting cash or wire transfers, requiring guests to carry wads of banknotes.

Wireless Internet is now also available throughout the property. The hotel's meticulously maintained and updated record of guests' preferences – complete with the aliases employed by royalty and lesser, but still notable, mortals – is now being computerised.

The advent of modernity did, however, stop at the door: card keys have not made it to the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, where shiny brass keys remain de rigueur. The rockside cottages – available at €550 per day – still lack both running water and electrical power.

Originally a writers' retreat set up by Hippolyte de Villemessant, founder of Le Figaro newspaper, in 1869, Villa Soleil was made into the Grand Hôtel du Cap in 1889

by Italian hotelier Antoine Sella.

However, its link to the world of letters was not severed. Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald became habitués, the latter immortalising the now much expanded hotel in Tender Is The Night as the Hôtel des Étrangers.

In the wake of the writers came a host of famous guests: The Kennedys, Marlene Dietrich, Winston Churchill, Marc Chagall and many others. However, namedropping is not encouraged at the Du Cap-Eden-Roc; that goes without saying, as such a grand hotel would naturally attract its fair share of the demographic.

Expanded with the Eden-Roc pavilion, two private villas – Villa Eleana and Villa les Cèdres – 33 cabanas along the rocks facing the Mediterranean and the Les 2 Fontaines

Diners will be living the dream with the sea views from the restaurant terrace 36

stands still and class endures

piano bar, the landmark hotel includes a 54-acre subtropical garden which adds to the atmosphere of refined serenity.

The complex underwent a recent $70m renovation in the early 2010s coordinated and overseen by Maja Oetker, widow of the German billionaire businessman Rudolf August Oetker.

The Oetker Gruppe, founded as a food processing company in 1891, diversified into hotel management by taking a stake in the Brenners Park Hotel & Spa in BadenBaden in 1921, acquiring this playground of the Shah of Persia and King Edward VII outright two decades later.

Since then the Oetker Hotel Collection has slowly expanded to include nine luxury hotels: four in France, and one each in London, Marrakesh, and Saint Barthélemy, in addition to the original Baden-Baden hotel and the Frégate Island in the Seychelles.

The Oetker Hotel Management company recently announced the opening of its first luxury property in Latin America. The Palácio Tangará Hotel, set in the sprawling Burle Marx Park in Brazil's megalopolis São Paulo, is expected to open its doors to the public early next year.

The Palácio Tangará, with 141 rooms,

including 59 suites, does not only aim to be one of South America's finest hotels; it also seeks to create a unique atmosphere with the lush tropical gardens and forest that surround it.

The 24-acre Burle Marx Park, which hosts the new hotel, is named after Brazil's celebrated landscape architect and botanist Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994), an environmentalist pioneer, a driving force of modernistic landscape design, and creator of some of the world's most famous avant-garde gardens and cityscapes such

as Rio de Janeiro's hallmark Copacabana promenade with its four-kilometre long mosaic of ocean waves.

In 2018, the Oetker Hotel Collection will welcome its eleventh member with the opening of a “masterpiece hotel” in New York. At the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, the renovation of 2011 may have introduced minibars and flat-screen television sets, but it thwarted attempts to let modernity impinge on the old world glamour.

Some things are just not meant to change – ever.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc features light, airy rooms in a traditional, understated style

Hotel suites offer unimaginable luxury for all guests 37

What in the world are we

by JASON AGNEW IT SEEMS that not a day goes by without a story concerning the environment and, more specifically, our mistreatment of it.

Seas full of fish-killing plastic waste, brimming landfills that will emit toxins for over 1,000 years, incinerators billowing out noxious fumes: our insatiable consumerism appears to be threatening our survival.

We are asphyxiated by the air we have ourselves poisoned, swamped by the waters we caused to rise, we wilt in temperatures that climb because of our behaviour.

We are bombarded by statistics, each more apocalyptic than the last. We are informed, and chided, that the UK annually produces 31 million tonnes of

We are all churning out more rubbish than the globe can cope with household rubbish – a weight equal to three and a half million double-decker buses, enough to form a convoy that would circumvent the globe two-and-a-half times.

Guilt-ridden and panic-stricken, we cough up our 5p at the supermarket

for a re-usable plastic bag, separate our refuse and deposit it into the appropriate recycling bins in the vain hope that we are doing our bit to save the planet.

But enough of the doom and desolation.

As recently highlighted by international media outlets, including the BBC, some visionaries are coming up with the most creative ways of putting all that detritus to the best possible use.

TRASH TO FASHION In 2009, Spain's Javier Goyeneche – already a successful fashion entrepreneur – created ECOALF, a fashion company that makes clothes with recycled materials.

Shortly after the birth of his first son,

The UK annually produces 31 million tonnes of household rubbish — and we are running out of space 38

Ververidis Vasilis / Shutterstock.com

doing with our waste…?

Sixty percent of plastic bags are used for less than 30 minutes

continued on next page

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Alfredo, Goyeneche became aware of just how much we are overusing the planet´s resources – five to six times more than the Earth can generate. ECOALF transforms abandoned fishing nets, plastic bottles, post-industrial cotton and wool, and even coffee residues into fabrics.

In an interview in The OECD Observer, Goyeneche explained that of the more than 500,000,000,000 plastic bags that are used worldwide every year, almost 60 percent are used for less than 30 minutes, but take more than 1,000 years to biodegrade.

If that wasn't bad enough, 650,000 tonnes of plastic fishing nets are left at the bottom of the oceans each year.

Commercial fisherman have to pay to store their nets in ports – and some would rather dump them at seas than cough up.

ECOALF now has partnerships with Apple (for a line of MacBook covers), Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and even Coca-Cola, with whom they launched the EKOCYCLE initiative. Another project, created with musician will.i.am, recycles waste left behind at Black Eyed Peas concerts.

Goyeneche recognises that environmentally friendly products – including some of his own – have been expensive, and sees making them more accessible as one of his biggest challenges.

Paradise lost... our detritus is defacing our beautiful world

39

PLASTIC ROADS The Indian climate can be merciless to its thoroughfares and the country's potholes and fissures are testament to the ravages of monsoon rains and heatwaves, not to mention the sheer weight of traffic.

That could be about to change thanks to a college chemistry professor, Rajagopalan Vasudevan.

Just over 10 years ago, Dr Vasudevan pioneered a road surface made from traditional tar and hot gravel – plus shredded plastic. Plastic and asphalt mix well, as they are both derived from petroleum, and this combination was a cheaper version of polymer roads in the US where they use a combination of styrene-butadiene-styrene to bulk-up and strengthen the tarmac – which increases the price of the road by 30-50 percent. A million low-grade plastic bags in the mix brings the per-kilometre cost of roadbuilding down by almost 10 percent, and saves one tonne of asphalt.

Another apparent advantage is that these plastic road surfaces can endure much higher temperatures: more than 60 degrees Celsius. Normal roads start to deform at 50 degrees.

Dr Vasudevan´s low-cost alternative is a godsend for a developing economy such as India´s. Chennai, the country´s fourth-largest metropolis started using it in

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From plastic roads to deliveries of detritus, lateral thinking is at work 2012, then abandoned it – only to see its streets devastated in the flooding of 2015.

They reintroduced the plastic solution as a reaction to that calamity.

ROME'S NEW EXPORT Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, has been struggling with its inability to dispose of the rubbish it generates.

Italy´s northern neighbour, Austria – with typical Teutonic efficiency – has spare capacity at a waste-to-energy plant at Zwentendorf, 60 kilometres west of Vienna.

The City of Rome is paying EVN, Austria´s second-largest utility company, just under €150 a tonne to take their refuse. It is a prime example of the EU´s “Circular Economy”, which is restorative

and regenerative by design.

Up to 70,000 tonnes of Roman waste are transported by train to Zwentendorf in airtight containers three times a week, where it is incinerated and converted into hot flue gas. This in turn generates steam, which is delivered to a nearby power station and converted into enough electricity to supply 170,000 households in the region surrounding Vienna.

It may seem counter-intuitive to transport waste such a long distance, but it turns out to be good business for both sides. EVN makes money from selling energy and from removing the waste, and Rome pays less than it would to put it into landfill – itself an environmentally unsound practice.

HEALTH PROGRAMME In Indonesia, Dr Gamal Albinsaid, CEO of Indonesia Medika, a health company, has come up with an ingenious way of reducing waste and improving health care, while creating jobs into the bargain.

Garbage Clinical Insurance (GCI) is a health micro-insurance programme which uses garbage as a financial resource. The initiative, which began in 2013, has been lauded by Prince Charles and American Democrat politician John Kerry.

Gamal was only 23 when he learned of a young girl who had died from an easily treatable disease because her parents couldn´t afford health care.

In a country where more than 50 percent of the refuse isn´t collected and 60 percent of the population has no access to healthcare, his solution – free healthcare in return for collecting garbage – seemed like the perfect fit. More than 600 members are each collecting an average of 3kg of waste per month, and another 300 volunteers, mostly medical students, do house-calls and offer advice on preventative health care.

One flaw in the model is that it offers only basic healthcare; to receive secondary or tertiary care members have to join the government's national insurance scheme, but this is also a low-cost option which starts at 25,000 IDR (€1.40).

It is easy to succumb to despair when faced with global problems of this severity, but it is reassuring that people are striving to solve the world´s problems.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Gold at the end of the rainbow... and plastic in our roads?

ECOALF made this natty puffer jacket from discarded fishing nets 41

Lazing and grazing our way to an early grave You walk or cycle to work, watch your posture, eat modestly for lunch and have an early night after a half-glass of organic red in the evening. Well you're not like us, and we hate you. HAL WILLIAMS reports from his office hammock IF IT'S ANY consolation, healthy people, we want to be like you. We do. We just can't. As journalist Doug Larson once said, life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. It's all about motivation… and temptation.

DARK SIDE Why is it so hard to be healthy, and so easy to slip over to the Dark Side of deepfried Mars bars and chips with everything?

You'd think the fact that our lives literally depend on it would be inspiration enough, but up against the siren call of “Let's go for a beer”, the alternative of “Let's do some stretches” can barely be heard over the scraping of chairs and fumbling for keys.

Experts (and this comes from Britain's The Lancet magazine) now believe a sedentary lifestyle kills as many people as smoking. And, according to still more

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experts, a poor diet kills more people than a lack of exercise. The take-away from these facts and stats, for many of us, is that if we eat a bit better and do some exercise, we can smoke. Hooray.

Investigations by Professor Max Parkin for Cancer Research UK, a body unwilling to let people like me make assumptions like that, found that claim to be an exaggeration – but agreed that inactivity is nonetheless responsible for nine per cent of premature deaths worldwide. So leaving aside the issue of smoking -- for the moment, at least -- how can we incorporate exercise into a modern office?

Here at BV, we're a pretty sedentary lot and stress is seen – rightly or wrongly – as a bigger risk than inactivity. We have a hammock and two hammock chairs between the desks to prove it, although as a sop to occupational health and safety we

Correct posture

Squat have some of those oversized exercise balls, too: a couple in black and one in a rather fetching green. BV folk sometimes sit on them, but the hammock sees more action, if that's the correct word.

Are we putting the “ill” in chill with this go-ahead policy, and should we trade-in the hammock (or rather the hammock chairs, which actually aren't that comfortable) for more inflatable exercise balls, or a brace of exercise bikes?

Medical research seems to answer in the affirmative.

FITNESS REGIMES Fortune magazine has featured the health-wise habits of CEOs like Richard Branson and Twitter´s Dick Costolo; even Mark Zuckerberg and Oprah Winfrey, according to MSN, have fitness regimes.

But these guys have time on their hands, and no one wanting to know why they're doing push-ups in the boardroom instead of making that call.

What about us, the little people? How do we find time to fit physical exercise into a working day, and how do we find the motivation to follow-through – especially when there's a fine hammock within arm's

Lunge

Plank

For the deskbound office worker, periodic movement is essential. This statement does not mean you have to get up and run around the office or do push-ups in the hallway (the pushups are not a bad idea though).

Instead, the goal is to move a handful of times during the workday for 5-10 minutes. It might seem simple, but such simple things can reap benefits. For example, one of our former clients, an executive who was deskbound much of his day, came to us with limited mobility. His mobility was so limited that, while sitting in the driver's seat of his car, he could not turn to reach something on the back seat without pain. By incorporating a few of our mobility exercises a few times a day, he eliminated this issue in two weeks— the pain was gone.

There are many things you can

do. Almost any calisthenics movement will work, as long as you can perform it at or around your desk. For example, if you're on a call or just reading emails on your computer, you can drop into a lunge or squat and hold either movement for the time, effectively using it as a stretch.

If you need to clear your brain for a moment, then take a break from work to complete a few toe touches, arm rotations, or waist rotations.

These exercises will wake up the posterior chain (back side of the body), which can get stiff and achy from being deskbound.

If you want to work on strength without getting sweaty (you don't want sweat stains with a client in front of you), perform a few push-ups, hold a plank, complete bodyweight squat, or perform a bodyweight lunge at your desk.

At the same time, remember the

importance of good body position while at your desk. Sure, try to sit up straight, but also consider your office setup. Your desk should be a suitable height for your body, your chair should be high enough that your legs rest at a 90-degree angle, and your computer should be at head height to avoid forward lean of the head, neck, and spine.

Again, these ideas might seem simple, and really they are, but properly used each can provide significant benefit to your comfort at work as well as your level of fitness and mobility.

So there you have it. BV's picturehunting wizard and IT (as opposed to PT) expert Richard Thomas has ferreted out some diagrams from the web to help you turn Nathan's advice into perspiration and, eventually, muscle. Bon courage.

If you need me, I'll be in the hammock.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

reach?

We asked American personal trainer Nathan DeMetz to nut-out a PT regime for the lazy masses mired in offices around the world: something fun, not too timeconsuming, and not too embarrassing to do a step or two away from your desk, while your work colleagues look on. No equipment (or leotards) required, and it must be fun: that was the general brief.

PERSONAL TRAINER Indiana-based DeMetz can deadlift 535 pounds and run a six-minute mile, so he walks what he talks about. According to his website (www.nathandemetz.com) Nathan is “an average guy who just happens to be a personal trainer”. He has 16 years of experience and holds multiple degrees and certifications in areas such as personal training, fitness nutrition, sports nutrition and exercise science.

Here's what he came up with for BV…

Incorrect posture

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BV Award Winner

Patience and discipline

Best Multi-Family Office Caribbean 2017

The Holt-Dunn family has been managing investments and assets for generations

Five generations ... and it all started here

“One cannot be truly prepared for the ordeals and challenges of the future without a detailed knowledge and understanding of the past, for the future is directly shaped by the actions of the past�

- Sir Herbert Holt 44

SIR HERBERT HOLT created a business empire that spanned three continents during one of the most turbulent periods in history, including the Great Depression.

Holt also served as president and chairman of the Royal Bank of Canada from 1908 –1941, multiplying its assets 15-fold during his tenure.

Sir Herbert's legacy and enviable record was carried into what is today Holdun Multi-Family Office, an independent multi-family office providing discretionary wealth management, tax and estate planning and asset protection.

This Family Office is owned and controlled by the Dunn and Meier families who provide services for individuals, families, private companies, foundations and endowment funds.

Today, the Dunn and Meier families' investment focus is multinational, and includes investment banking participation for clients, as well as related personal financial services.

The Family Office was founded to manage and transfer established wealth across generations.

But what is different about Holdun Family Office?

Holdun Family Office is unique in that the team manages and invests their clients' money, the same way it manages and invest its own money. Experience and objectivity, as well as transparency, is offered to all their clients in the same way as it is offered to their own families.

How many managers can make similar claims?

Holdun Family Office is a discreet private provider of personal financial services and not aligned with any financial institution. The Dunn and Meier families are committed to optimising prudent returns and providing related personal services to their clients.

The ultimate objective of most families is to transfer wealth to future generations in a tax-effective and strategic

manner. Holdun is eminently capable of executing these objectives for its clientele, working in partnership with each client's advisors.

Holdun provides personal services such as bill-paying, revenue collection, assistance with age-care, personal healthcare, education, and property management,.

Its mission is to assist all clients and their families in growing assets, protecting existing wealth and preparing the next generation for the responsibilities they will assume in the future.

Holdun also differs from other independent wealth managers and family offices in the following important ways: GENERATIONAL PLANNING With individual and family clients, Holdun works with the entire family offering counselling on investments, taxes, estate planning and philanthropy from an early age.

INTEGRATION OF SERVICES Holdun oversees clients' entire financial universe, in keeping with its family policy.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT Holdun assists clients in strategic wealth planning for current and future generations.

LONGEVITY Holdun has survived and prospered through many financial crises, constantly proving its ability to generate beneficial returns.

INDEPENDENCE Holdun is a truly independent family office, owned and controlled by the Dunn and Meier families and placing the interests of their clients first. Holdun's independence frees it from any potential conflicts of interest and allows it to act always in the clients' best interests.

Holdun suggests only those investments that have been thoroughly researched and that meet its own rigorous evaluation. This, combined with the alignment of interests with their clients, makes for Holdun Family Office a family

will deliver family prosperity

office one worth considering.

STUART DUNN‘S REFLECTIONS “The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation.” – Seth Klarman LONG-TERM investing is the process of buying and holding investment securities you believe will compound investor wealth indefinitely into the future.

Individuals have the luxury of thinking and acting in terms of decades, an unheard-of time-frame on Wall Street.

The ability to be patient and disciplined while extending your time horizon can be a huge advantage.

It's all about harnessing the power of thinking long-term, cutting down on unforced errors, and having the patience to allow compound interest to work in your favour. The question is, how does one go about this? Here are a few thoughts that may help.

When you approach stock purchases as if you were never going to sell, it forces you to be very selective in which businesses you will invest. Long-term investing puts a spotlight on what really

“Client assets are managed alongside those of the Dunn and Meier families, ensuring an alignment of objectives for all investors” makes the long-term prospects and competitive advantage of the business.

As I have often stressed: ignore the noise. Paying attention to daily stock price fluctuations causes investors to over-react to minor events that have no impact on the long-term earnings prospects of a business.

If you can focus on the underlying business instead of the daily stock price, you will be well on your way to becoming a long-term investor.

Another thought is to take advantage

Photograph by Ben Jamieson

of the Lindy Effect, which states that things that have proven themselves to have staying power are likely to be around longer than things that haven't.

In other words, a business that has thrived for 50 years will probably be around for another 50.

When you invest for the long run you need to invest in businesses that have staying power, high quality companies with sustainable and competitive advantages.

Having a sustainable, competitive advantage is the only way a company can maintain high returns over a long period of time.

Albany Financial Center, Suite 303 South Ocean Boulevard New Providence, Bahamas, SP-63158 Tel. 1 242 601 2021

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Meet the family: Bruno Meier, Claude Philip Meier, Brendan Dunn, Stuart Dunn

info@holdun.com www.holdun.com 45

LATAM spreads its wings over The transformation of a minor carrier from a small country into the largest airline in Latin America is one of corporate guts and glory LAN CHILE, now LATAM Airlines Group, was an unlikely candidate for hegemony in the skies: its small domestic market did not allow for economies of scale or synergies of any kind.

Instead, LAN Chile leveraged the power of good corporate governance and the country's well-functioning capital markets to strike out – tentatively at first – and broaden its operational base to become the third-largest airline by market value in the world.

Though small even by Latin American standards, the old LAN Chile always had a pioneering streak. In December 1956, one of its Douglas DC6s made the first commercial flight over Antarctica, dropping down to a latitude of 73° south – flying over the icecap – for the shortest route to Auckland, New Zealand.

By late 1967, a LAN Chile Caravelle Sud Aviation was the first airliner in Latin America to touch down using the then-novel instrument

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landing system (ILS). It is the only carrier to have connected South America with destinations in Oceania and beyond, operating scheduled flights to Sydney, Auckland, Papeete in French Polynesia, and Easter Island.

BEHEMOTH OF THE AIR With a modern fleet (average age 5.1 years for its 310 aircraft), LATAM Airlines Group last year transported more than 68 million passengers. The company's subsidiaries operate around 1,400 flights per day, carrying almost 90 percent of air travellers in the seven markets where the group is present.

The company plans to keep its competitive edge and in 2014 became the Airbus' launch customer in Latin America for the A350 XWB, equipped with Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines (see Rolls-Royce corporate profile elsewhere in this issue) which deliver fuel savings of up to 25 percent.

Privatised in September 1989, LAN Chile – at the time a minor carrier with only a few long-haul routes – first conquered its home market through the acquisition of the country's second largest airline Ladeco

Pablo Chiozza: “It’s not all about Brazil.”

(Línea Aérea del Cobre) in 1995.

Rapid expansion became possible after Scandinavian Airlines sold its 49 percent stake in the company to local investors – the Cueto family and Sebastián Piñera.

Piñera had to divest his 26 percent stake in LAN Chile upon assuming the country's presidency in 2010. Only weeks later, the company announced its takeover of Brazilian flag carrier TAM (Transportes Aéreos Meridionais) for $3.8bn – the largest ever in the airline industry.

LAN Chile shares – cross-listed in Santiago and New York – soared. The presidency had cost Piñera around $1.1bn – the amount the Cuetos profited on the 26 percent stake they had just acquired from him.

The Cuetos are still relative newcomers on the aviation scene, but

have now earned their wings. Patriarch Juan Cueto Sierra (86) dabbled in real estate before taking a stake in the newly privatised Banco Español-Chile in 1976, accumulating a tidy sum in the years that followed. Investing his funds carefully in mining, insurance, and healthcare companies, Cueto Sr. exited the market during the 1982-83 economic crisis to concentrate on one of his minor ventures – Fast Air Carrier, a cargo airline he had founded in 1978.

Diligently accumulating profits and investing wisely, the Cueto family allied themselves with high-flying entrepreneur Sebastián Piñera to plot a takeover of LAN Chile.

Their timing was impeccable: just as the government got ready to offload its remaining shares in the airline, the Swedes of SAS decided to pull out. The Cueto/ Piñera alliance managed to take full control of LAN Chile at a discount.

DECISION-MAKING Introducing modern management techniques and processes, the airline's new owners immediately set about transforming the carrier into a lean – and, indeed, mean – organisation, cutting costs, streamlining decision-making processes, and shortening lines of communication in order to quickly respond to the constantly changing market demands.

LAN Chile made a killing on its cargo operations when the company started shipping farmed salmon to the United States directly from Puerto Montt – the gateway to Chile's deep south, a pristine region of mountains, lakes, fjords and islands, and home to large-scale aquaculture businesses.

LAN Chile's agility in responding to market forces allowed Chilean fish farmers to corner the US market delivering fresh salmon to US grocery stores faster – and cheaper – than even their New England competitors could.

EFFICIENCY With the Cuetos at the helm, LAN Chile became a byword for efficiency. By 2002, the company was ready to expand beyond its home market. In the wake of the demise of Peruvian flag carrier

Aeroperú (1999), LAN Perú was formed as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Over the next decade, LAN Ecuador, LAN Dominicana, LAN Argentina, and LAN Colombia followed to form a continent-wide network of airlines and routes.

The takeover – for political reason described as a merger – of TAM Airlines of Brazil completed LAN Chile's rapid transformation from a relatively obscure domestic carrier to major player in the global aviation industry.

More than most other Latin American airlines, LAN Chile managed to finance its expansion by raising cash via ADRs (American depository receipts) in New York issued by local banks against shares traded on US stock exchanges.

Thanks to the company's widely recognised excellence in governance,

investors quickly snapped up LAN Chile ADRs. Build around the seemingly simple concept of security, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, LATAM Airlines aims to soar even higher, bucking the trend.

“This is a complicated year for us in terms of how the Latin American economies are behaving,” says Pablo Chiozza, senior vice-president for USA, Canada, and the Caribbean.

“Brazil hasn't been stable for the past three years, and GDP is not only not growing, but it is decreasing,” he added.

“We're not seeing a recovery for Brazil in 2017, either. But the good news is we have a divided portfolio. Most of the Spanishspeaking countries are performing pretty well.

“It's not all about Brazil.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

South American continent

47

Daniel Hashim Small is beautiful, nano is knockout

10

PEOPLE

48

BOFFIN-turned-businessman Daniel Hashim is carving out a name for himself by getting nanotechnology out of the research laboratory and into the industrial marketplace.

Dr Hashim's leading product is a carbon sponge which can soak up oil spills in water. The oil can be stored in the sponge for later retrieval or burned off, allowing the product to be reused.

Nanotechnology involves the manipulation of matter on a molecular level, and the technique has the potential to develop new materials with applications in many fields.

The carbon sponge was developed by a nanotechnology research team at Rice University, Texas, in collaboration with labs in the US, Spain, Belgium and Japan. The researchers discovered that adding boron to carbon while creating nanotubes puts kinks and elbows into the molecules which turn them into solid, spongy blocks that soak up oil spilled in water.

Hashim says the nano-sponges as both super-hydrophobic (they repel water and, therefore, float) and oleophilic (they attract oil). They largely consist of air, conduct electricity, and can be manipulated with magnets.

Other potential applications could include use in making more efficient and lighter batteries, scaffolds for bone-tissue regeneration, or as filtration membranes. But readying the new technology for industrial use means finding ways of mass producing nanotubes.

Hashim's company – CSS Nanotech – marries academic research with corporate input to create commercial products for industry. He sees the carbon sponge as the first of many pioneering new products.

Hashim's business is initially focused on commercialising nanotechnology products that can be licensed for use in the oil and gas industry. He sees a role for proprietary nano-materials in providing engineered solutions for use in water purification, oil spill remediation, petrochemical refining, and thermal management systems. He is currently seeking a joint venture partner to fund a manufacturing facility.

Alexa von Tobel Being CEO ‘doesn't mean I'm smartest'

10

FINANCIAL planning is rarely considered an activity that attracts passion, but for one entrepreneur it delivered enough fervour to warrant dropping out of Harvard Business School.

In 2008, Alexa von Tobel was barely a year into her post-graduate course. She'd already spent years studying at the world famous university, being handed a prestigious Magna Cum Laude for her senior thesis on Bhutan. However, her “hobby” website, LearnVest, suddenly began to take off – and Von Tobel had to make a difficult choice.

“It was a really hard decision,” she says, “but I was so passionate about bringing financial planning to the masses that it was a necessity.”

Despite choosing to turn her back on Harvard Business School, Von Tobel can thank the wider institution for inspiring the idea behind LearnVest.

Soon after graduating from Harvard University in 2006, it dawned on her that she was walking out into the big wide world without ever having taken so much as a single class in personal finance.

LearnVest's popularity was astounding. Within months, the company's profile expanded and its founder had to keep a tight grip on the reins to maintain the remarkable momentum.

Within a year of making the choice to leave HBS, LearnVest was attracting a host of awards and accolades. One of the things that sets Von Tobel apart is her unflinching humility. She always trusts her staff to improve on her ideas.

“I don't have the best idea in the room, so I say ‘here's my idea – make it better',” she says. “Just because I'm the CEO doesn't mean I'm the smartest.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PEOPLE

49

Google runs rings around

Benny Marty / Shutterstock.com

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FROM a little-known university-based search engine in 1996, Google has mushroomed into a multinational titan, employing many thousands of people in offices and studios in every major country.

It ranks alongside the likes of Apple, Facebook and Amazon in the worldwide tech industry – and it's been said that you are more likely to win a place at Harvard or Yale than to land a job with Google.

The company's hiring process is notoriously tough, and competition is intense. But, once through its doors, yours is a golden ticket that could tempt you to stay for a lifetime.

INTERNET GOLIATH The California-based internet goliath has developed a radical method of recruitment which is changing the nature of human resources. It spends a great deal of time and effort to ensure it finds the right people, and that its workforce is happy, motivated and loyal. Staff turnover at Google's UK offices, for instance, is a mere 4.3 percent.

The man behind Google's revolutionary approach to recruitment and

employee satisfaction is Laszlo Bock. Born in communist Romania in 1972, under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, he fled with his family to the West as a child. His early experiences have shaped the way he thinks.

In those days Romania was riddled with “secrecy, lies, and fear”, says Bock in his best-selling book Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google. “Friends and family members would disappear for criticising the government,” he writes. “Children were encouraged to spy on their parents.

My family fled, seeking freedom…”

Bock, a Google vice-president, is head of the company's “People Operations”. He is responsible for developing a pioneering philosophy of work, and a blueprint for recruiting that has been adopted by some of the world's leading businesses. “We spend more time working than doing anything else in life,” he says. “It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing.”

REFERRALS Google does not use third-party recruitment agencies, and finds its own

people by encouraging referrals from existing employees – known as “Googlers” – and searching websites like LinkedIn and Google+ for people of the right calibre.

INVITATION-ONLY It is well-placed to identify potential talent through Google itself. One employee described the beginning of his own journey to a job at the company.

He was Googling a coding topic when a message popped up on his screen, saying: “You speak our language. Would you like to take a test?” He followed a link to Foo.Bar – an invitation-only Google site. Once there, he spent several weeks solving complicated coding puzzles, and was eventually called in for a series of interviews.

“Foo.bar is a brilliant recruiting tactic,” he said. “Google used it to identify me before I had even applied anywhere else, and they made me feel important while doing so” Managers at Google set the recruiting bar high. He says that it has taken years of research and experimentation to make a science out of hiring exceptional people.

competitors with hiring policy The Californiabased internet goliath has developed a radical method of recruitment mathematics. If you spell out each word, you'll see that the sequence is the number of letters in each word. So there are several correct answers – any nine-letter number could be the next in the sequence.

While Google has changed the way Human Resources works, at least one former employee doesn't appear to have learned many lessons. Rival Yahoo's embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer, who worked as a high-ranking executive for Google throughout much of her career, caused a furore when she banned telecommuting at Yahoo, for instance.

She was also criticised for “not trusting” her team in the company's much-criticised brand redesign in 2013.

She introduced a controversial employee grading system, designed to identify high-

flyers and weed out underachievers, but the system was so flawed it infuriated staff and exacerbated the original problem – all examples, perhaps, of how not to treat employees.

By refining its hiring techniques, Google isn't just trying to be “a great place to work” – though it has won that title more than 50 times. In these fast-paced days, especially on the frontiers of the tech industry, there is fierce competition.

SELF-DRIVE CAR Google is currently in a race with other IT giants to be the first to get the self-drive car to market. The team which Google is putting together is necessarily cloaked in secrecy, but the company has thrown its net wide, bringing in the brightest talents, not just from IT but from the traditional automotive industry, aerospace and electronics. To beat its rivals to the best talent, Google must ensure that its reputation as an employer is faultless.

Employees at Google are famously welltreated: free food, casual present-giving (British Googlers were each given a bicycle in 2008); even alcohol is provided at endof-the-week meetings. Every year millions of ambitious, intelligent people try, and fail, to land a dream job with Google. They may need to lower their sights – or try for a place at Business Vision instead.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

“A good rule of thumb is to hire only people who are smarter than you,” he says. The process involves numerous interviews, including face-to-face talks with subordinates and peers whose feedback is considered before a final appointment.

Bock's mantra includes such maxims as: “Take away managers' power over employees; learn from your best and your worst employees; don't trust your gut – use data to predict and shape the future; and if you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough.”

RIDDLES One element of the hiring process at Google, which attracted a great deal of attention from the HR world a few years ago, was its famous list of riddles.

Candidates were provided with a series of bizarre questions – some of which had no correct answer.

The aim, primarily, was to evaluate candidates' thought processes. Some questions were straightforward mathematical posers with a precise answer, while others contained logic tricks.

An example of a typical Google riddle is: What is the next number in this sequence – 10,9,60,90,70,66? This is the sort of logic question which is often used in IQ tests. The answer has nothing to do with

The company’s hiring process is notoriously tough, and competition is intense 51

SPECIAL FEATURE: SOUNDS OF BRITAIN

Now hear this: Tannoy rules

WHENEVER a brand becomes so ubiquitous that its name is turned into a verb and generic noun, competitors tend to turn green with envy.

And well they might. Tannoy has been in business since 1926 as a manufacturer of loudspeakers – and it admits little to no competition. For decades, the company's public-address systems, largely developed with proprietary technology, have stood at the apex of industrial-strength audio.

Tannoy loudspeakers were to be found

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everywhere, from military barracks to sports stadiums, concert halls to seaside holiday camps.

The company produces a range of public-address systems for any venue.

But the company also enjoys a strong reputation as a manufacturer of premier speakers for audiophiles. The speakers and enclosures of its famed Prestige GR (Gold Reference) series have been in continuous production for over half a century. The top-of-the-line Westminster Royal is a

whopper which boasts an internal volume of 530 litres and weighs 140 kilogrammes.

The elegant and vintage-looking enclosures – hand-crafted, exquisitely finished wood, and much at home in a country manor – feature the latest incarnation of Tannoy's enduring claim to fame: the Dual Concentric Driver Unit – a mammoth loudspeaker 380mm in diameter and equipped with a huge AlNiCo (an alloy composed of aluminium, nickel, and cobalt) magnet.

as a verb and a noun Tannoy – (v) make an announcement, particularly at a public venue.

...

Tannoy – (n) publicaddress system.

triode in a single-ended circuit. They revere vacuum valves such as the 2A3, first introduced in 1936 and producing a power output of not more than 3.5W. It is one of the larger-output bottles.

However, once such a flea-power amp is hooked-up to a Tannoy – any model from the company's classic Prestige line – pure magic happens. Those few paltry Watts bring forth a magnificent soundstage so detailed and clear that any instrument's position may be precisely pinpointed.

BETWEEN BOTTLEHEADS And that's the whole point of the enduring love affair between the bottleheads (valve amp aficionados) and Tannoy: instead of using power to paint a soundstage in broad strokes, Tannoy allows audiophiles the opportunity to reproduce sound to perfection.

Today, Tannoy is present wherever unique acoustic challenges demand thorough solutions. The company's equipment powers venues as diverse as the Sydney Opera House and the Abu Dhabi Formula One Circuit.

From its corporate headquarters in Coatbridge, near Glasgow, Scotland, Tannoy manages three distinct product lines: home audio, installed sound (public address), and studio monitoring. The dual concentric speaker design – which places a high-frequency compression driver within a larger bass unit – remains central.

As with nearly all classic Britishmade audio equipment, Tannoys rarely

depreciate in value. Original Tannoy AlNiCo loudspeakers from the 1950s and 1960s only rarely come up for sale.

Whenever a pair does appear on a specialist website, they command high prices and are usually sold within minutes.

Superior quality is timeless – and it never goes out of fashion.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

These speakers, first developed and brought to market in the 1940s, are at the heart of Tannoy's corporate success. The company's dual concentric drivers unsurpassed for clarity, accuracy and – perhaps as important – efficiency, requiring only minimal amounts of power to produce vast volumes of sound.

At a time of restricted amplifier power, when a big public-address system meant to reach thousands of babbling people produced perhaps an undistorted output 30 Watt, loudspeaker sensitivity was a consideration of overriding importance.

With its dual concentric design, Tannoy cornered the market by providing a driver of high quality and sensitivity.

Only American audio engineer and pioneer Paul Wilbur Klipsch (1904-2002) ever came close to rivalling Tannoy in loudspeaker design.

METICULOUSLY FOLDED However, his famous Klipschorn speaker depended on a meticulously folded amplifying horn inside an enclosure of continental proportions – sometimes dismissed as a loudhailer with a wooden finish – to reach the efficiencies the Scottish company was able to attain in more conventional ways.

In the rarefied atmosphere of ultrahigh-end audio, Tannoy rules – absolutely.

This is the preserve of moneyed eccentrics who swear by 1930s amplifier design and abhor negative feedback circuits and anything that is not a directly-heated

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SPECIAL FEATURE: SOUNDS OF BRITAIN

Engineering brilliance = sonic IF NAMES like Linn, Wharfdale, SME, Revo and Naim mean anything to you, chances are you spend more than a little time listening to music.

Surround-sound systems, usually linked to big-screen televisions, have raised the bar for the quality of sound reproduction in many modern home. But for audiophiles – the serious connoisseurs of aural pleasure – there are bigger and better things out there.

A TechDAS Air Force One turntable perhaps? A snip at just over €84,000, the Air Force One has an air bearing to support the platter, air suspension for isolation and – wait for it – the ability to suck a warped LP flat. (If you were born after the 1980s, an LP is a Long-Playing vinyl record…)

RAREFIED AIR If that doesn't cut the mustard, another €22,500 will get you into the rarefied air occupied by the ears of those who swear by the sound of the JC Vernier La Platine Magnum, with a belt drive and a 400kg (yes, 400kg) granite base for its 50cm platter.

Back in the realm of mortals is a West Sussex precision engineering company called SME creates a turntable called the Model 15A for a mere €9,000. Perhaps more importantly, in real terms, the

A top-of-therange hifi is a wish-list item for many company is now recognised as perhaps the leading manufacturer of the world's best tonearms – the mechanical device that guides the cartridge over a vinyl record.

Formed in 1946 to manufacture scale models for the engineering trade and, a bit later, parts for aircraft and office machines, the Scale Model Equipment Company of Steyning – a town with a population of about 6,000 in the South Downs – had by the 1950s gained some recognition for its expertise in precision machining.

At some time in 1959, the company's founder and managing-director, Alastair Robertson-Aikman, asked his craftsmen to build a pick-up arm for his personal turntable.

Eager to comply with the request, the workers came up with an exquisitely

Serious ear gear: SME Model 30/2 54

machined component that instantly enthralled all who heard it. RobertsonAikman received a deluge of requests from family, friends, acquaintances and even complete strangers who all wanted a tonearm just like the one he had fitted to his turntable.

Sensing a business opportunity, Robertson-Aikman gave the go-ahead for production to start and by September 1959 the first weekly batch of 25 tonearms – built entirely of individually machined metal components – was ready for shipment. Not long after, the company changed its name to SME Limited, in order to de-emphasise its scale modelling roots.

INDUSTRY STANDARD During the 1960s, SME Series II tone arms became the industry standard in broadcasting and de rigueur amongst audiophiles.

The famous 3009 and 3012 models were, literally, aeons ahead of the competition. American-made Rek-o-Kut tonearms, arguably the next best thing, looked rudimentary by comparison – an assembly of parts.

SME tonearms were made out of a polished stainless steel tubing with a lightweight head-shell, to accommodate the cartridge, pivoting on knife-edge

horizontal bearings. To add a measure of endearing British quirkiness, anti-skating bias was provided by a tiny cylindrical weight – a thing of beauty in its own right – suspended from a nylon string.

Up to the present day, the basic design of SME tonearms remains largely unchanged with many tens of thousands original 3009s and 3012s still in daily service – and still a good few notches above the competition.

Over time, the metals employed became slightly more esoteric to further reduce weight and friction.

The SME Series III, while a commercial success, never quite attained the popularity of the preceding design – not because it was in any way inferior; but rather because the Series II was close to audio perfection.

The Series V, launched in the mid1980s and still the company's flagship model, is widely considered the best tonearm available for any money, anywhere.

It was designed to offer an optimal platform for the superior moving coil cartridges that had come into vogue and called for a significantly lower tracking force – imposing the need for frictionfree lightweight tonearms: right up SME's Steyning alley. The Series V retails for around €3,700.

ENGINEERING MASTERPIECE Building on its precision engineering heritage and the company's reputation for peerless quality, SME in the early 1990s released its own turntables – massive affairs that dampen any vibrations and lack any sonic footprint.

Predictably, the Model 20 and 30 turntables were instantly hailed as engineering masterpieces. An entry-level Model 10 – a beast weighing in at over 16kg – will set an audiophile back some €4,800: a small price to pay for a slice of perfection.

SME Model 20s and 30s turntables, equipped with Series V tonearms, are used

for transcription and archiving purposes when nothing but the best will suffice.

SME still services all products it has ever sold and will frequently replace abused tonearms – they seldom fail on their own – for a token sum.

Over the past 20 years, the Steyning company has invested heavily in the development of its in-house precision engineering services to enhance design and toolmaking capabilities throughout the painstaking and time-consuming manufacturing process.

SME's products are as much a result of superior engineering as they are of originality.

The company's tonearms and turntables not only look stunning, they resemble nothing else on the market. But if you are really keen to burn some money the JC Vernier La Platine Magnum is first pick for the BV office.

Please send via registered post in a well-padded parcel.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

joy. Just ask an audiophile

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SPECIAL FEATURE: SOUNDS OF BRITAIN

Straight to the top, with gain THERE are only so many ways to audiophile nirvana, and when no corners are cut the result may be akin to a straight line. As it happens, that is also the way an audio amplifier ideally operates – a straight signal path, with gain.

Until superconductors become a consumer reality, the closest thing to the ideal remains valve amplification. The technology may hark back to the 1920s – and was almost entirely discarded in the 1970s when semiconductors burst onto the scene – but it is still widely considered unequalled when it comes to sound reproduction. With vacuum valves, an amplifier may be built using only five components in the signal path (for the curious: load resistor, driver valve, coupling capacitor, power triode, and output transformer).

ESOTERIC FRINGE Though most great British brands have disappeared or are now confined to the esoteric fringe – Leak, Lowther, Goodmans, Garrard et al – a few have survived and continue to prosper without succumbing to market pressures.

Quad Electroacoustics of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, still sits atop its perch, manufacturing a modest, yet superior, range of audio equipment. Though the company has fully embraced modernity and offers state-of-the-art technology, it has also stayed true to its heritage and continues to build and sell models first designed and released in the early 1950s.

Originally created by Quad's legendary founder Peter Walker in 1953, the Quad II series of power amplifiers was reintroduced a decade ago due to strong demand from audiophiles. It suffered no modifications apart from some cosmetic ones dictated by updated safety standards, though the range has expanded to include an integrated (pre + power) amplifier and two

56

Quad ramps up the amp more powerful versions of the original Quad II – whose pair of KT66 kinkless triode valves produced all of 12 Watts, more than enough for the day.

Quad Electroacoustics also sells updated versions of its original QC 22 pre-amplifier – a tiny and delightfully idiosyncratic affair – and the iconic ESL loudspeaker, the first mass-produced electrostatic loudspeaker in the world and a model that represented a radical departure from the classic paper-conebased design to offer unparalleled clarity, accuracy, and sonic transparency. The Quad ESL-57, launched in 1957 and still coveted by audiophiles, moves sound via an ultra-thin membrane suspended in an electrostatic field.

Quad was one of only a select few high-end British audio manufacturers that managed to transition almost seamlessly from valve-based to transistorised amplification. The company's 303 solidstate power amplifier, introduced as early as 1967 and the successor to the Quad II, sold close to 100,000 units and remained in production for almost 20 years.

What made the Quad 303 special was that it lacked the harsh metallic sound of the earliest transistors. In fact, no reputable audiophile will touch any kit produced in the 1960s or 1970s that contains so much as a single transistor – apart from the Quad 303.

Founded by Peter J Walker in 1936 with a view to produce the most accurate audio amplifier possible, Quad – then more prosaically named the Acoustical Manufacturing Co. Ltd. – was bombed out of its London facility in 1941. It found a new home in Huntingdon, from where it has not moved since. The company's new name came from the rather militaristic acronym used to describe its first product: Quality Unit Amplifier Domestic (QUAD) – in other words, an amp.

It was Mr Walker who defined the ideal audio amplifier as a “straight wire with gain”. An industry legend, Peter J Walker retired in the 1980s, turning the company over to his son, Ross.

INVENTORY OF PARTS While Quad Electroacoustics has changed hands a few times since and is now owned by the International Audio Group. The company maintains a full inventory of parts to service any product it ever sold.

With superior products and service, Quad Electroacoustics proves that delivering consistent quality secures enduring success. Whilst the company may represent but a blip on the radar screen of the industry's corporate behemoths, it has a loyal following, especially among audiophiles in Japan, where an original set of Quad II mono block power amps finds eager buyers at £4,000 or more.

Untampered ESL-57 speakers regularly fetch double or triple that sum.

Quad kit is not unlike art or good wine: it appreciates in value over time.

Eesha Khare Young inventor changing the mobile world

10

MOBILE phone batteries last for a few hours and then slowly die. We all sigh a little, put them on charge, and wait a few hours more.

But Eesha Khare didn't resign herself to the endlessly repetitive cycle of having a phone on and off the charger. Instead, she channelled her frustration into finding a solution.

The daughter of an engineer, Eesha once found herself away from home and unable to contact her parents due to a dead phone battery. It was the inspiration she needed to launch her quest to find a better way.

She worked night and day on a school project that focused on developing a super capacitor, and a way of charging batteries faster than ever before.

Facing an industry awash with huge names like Sony, Samsung, Xioami, Apple and Huawei – together with their billions upon billions of dollars ploughed into advancing their technical capabilities – would be enough to put anyone off even attempting to find an improvement.

But not Eesha Khare. In 2013, as an 18-year-old student in Saratoga, California, she was handed a $50,000 prize for her industry-changing school project – a super capacitor will allow mobile phone batteries to be fully charged in about 20 seconds, and maintain power ten times longer.

After beating hundreds of competitors to the prize, she decided to put the whole lot into funding her studies at Harvard University.

Khare is now close to finishing her studies, and would like to develop her work on mobile phone technology further. Dozens of industry giants have already publically stated that their technology is now capable of adapting the super-capacitor theory and, therefore, the 20-second charge should be just around the corner.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PEOPLE

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HAL knows how to show Retaining old world charm and eschewing the floating brick concept, Holland America Line (HAL) offers its guests world class cruising — ­ without the depersonalised, one-size-fits-all format found on some of the world’s bigger cruise ships HAL vessels are still instantly recognisable as stately ocean liners and the latest addition to its Statendam Class of ships, the MV Veendam, blends hip with timeless traditions. The Veendam has been in service since 1996, and underwent an extensive refit in 2012 which added new lanai and spa class staterooms to tie into the wellness trend, and offer passengers more convenient access to outside verandas and promenades.

UNMISTAKABLY DUTCH The Veendam was redesigned according to the Showroom-at-Sea concept which calls for a more intimate and closeup theatre experience that emphasises performers' talents rather than the shockand-awe, Las Vegas-style stage that can overpower the senses.

Great care was taken to preserve the

ship's timeless look and feel. The Veendam and her sister ship, MV Maasdam, enjoy a well-earned reputation amongst cruisers for their warm atmosphere. The 13 decks are peppered with countless cosy nooks which offer a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle. A good deal of effort went into producing a layout that avoids agglomerations of people so the ship's 1,350 passengers seldom have to queue or feel part of a crowd. Only at the two-deck high Rotterdam Dining Room and the famous Lido Restaurant may diners find themselves in a small group at peak times – but cocktails offer solace.

As with all 14 HAL cruise liners, the Veendam is registered in The Netherlands and sails with a full complement of experienced Dutch officers. The vessel carries a signature collection of Dutch

art, valued at over $2m, and is tastefully decorated with Delfts Blue objets d'art.

A vast collection of paintings of former Holland America Line ships – such as the SS Noordam which in April 2012 alerted the RMS Titanic to ice early into her illfated maiden voyage – complete a setting that is both traditional and unmistakably Dutch.

Now owned by Carnival Corporation, the world's largest cruise ship operator with more than 100 vessels across 10 brands, Holland America Line was founded in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1871 as Plate, Reuchlin & Company.

After its debut on the Amsterdam stock exchange two years later, the company changed its name to NederlandschAmerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij – a name so unpronounceable outside its

MV Oosterdam stops for a visit in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 60

you a really good time

home country that a shortened Englishlanguage version was soon adopted. Thus, the Holland America Line was born, carrying over 400,000 people from Europe to a new life in the Americas.

HERITAGE HAL ships are estimated to have ferried 10 percent of all passengers travelling steerage to the New World. At the time, the company's ships were hugely popular for their superior seagoing quality and cleanliness. Amongst migrants, HAL soon became known as The Spotless Fleet.

In 1895, HAL introduced its first vacation cruise – a short round-trip from Rotterdam to Copenhagen, in Denmark.

The voyage passed through the Kiel Canal, finished and opened to shipping that same year, a 98-kilometre cut through SchleswigHolstein which the Germans only 30 years earlier had removed from Danish orbit in the Second Schleswig War of 1864.

The canal, an engineering marvel of its

HAL ships are estimated to have ferried 10 percent of all passengers travelling steerage to the New World time and still in heavy use, connects the German Bight in the North Sea to Kiel Bay in the Baltic Sea. HAL offered its first long-distance cruise 15 years later. In 1910, the 10,700 tonne SS Statendam – a small tub by

today's standards – set sail for Palestine from New York harbour. By now operating a fleet of over ten vessels – all passenger ships named with the suffix “-dam”, and cargo ships christened “-dijk” – HAL suffered badly during the Great War (191418). Although flying the colours of neutral Holland, six of its ships were torpedoed and sunk while others were confiscated by the British to serve a troop transport.

HAL had a number of dual-purpose passenger/cargo ships built and – after the US imposed restriction on immigration – expanded its cruise schedule. In 1926, the Veendam II departed for HAL's first Caribbean cruise, while the Rijndam embarked on the company's first aroundthe-world voyage.

While cruising the world's seven seas for leisure would eventually become Holland America Line's mainstay, the company – by now widely recognised as one of the world's safest and best-run

continued on next page

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MV Maasdam, one of the HAL fleet, at anchor in the Caribbean

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shipping lines – was dealt a severe blow during World War II when it lost all but nine of its vessels to enemy action.

The HAL ship Westernland, acquired by the company in 1939 and berthed in Falmouth, England, at the outbreak of hostilities served as seat of the exiled Dutch government after the country was overrun by the Wehrmacht in May 1940.

With its history intrinsically linked to that of its home country, the Holland America Line has consistently and honourably served as a marine ambassador for the Netherlands.

In the post-war era, just before the advent of commercial air travel, most nations sought to express their greatness, presumed or otherwise, in luxurious flag carriers – literally ships of state – such as the SS France, the Queen Elizabeth 2, and the SS United States.

SPEED RECORDS All these vessels broke speed records, attaining an average speed of 35.59 knots covering the distance between Ambrose lightship, at the entrance to New York harbour, and Bishop Rock, in Cornwall, in an astonishing three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes – shaving a full ten hours of the record established by the RMS Queen Mary 14 years earlier.

In 1958, the Holland America Line, in line with its corporate tradition of understated elegance and superiority, joined the trend in style and with considerable aplomb, launching the 38,645-tonne SS Rotterdam – affectionately known as the Grande Dame, and widely considered one of the most elegant passenger liners ever to ply the oceans.

Destined to become the sister ship to the acclaimed SS Nieuw Amsterdam (1937), work on the Rotterdam's design was suspended “for the duration” to resume only in 1954 as The Netherlands emerged from post-war austerity. Ahead of her time and unique in design, the SS Rotterdam was conceived as a passenger liner/cruise ship. HAL management had sensed the impending demise of the big ocean liner as a primary means of transport and ordered a versatile ship that could easily be adapted for leisure cruises.

The resulting SS Rotterdam was a revolutionary design with a large deckhouse amidships where a funnel was usually expected to rise skywards. A number of design features, such as the engine's position two-thirds aft and its twin slightly curved uptake pipes, controversial

Some of the fleet in a Mexican harbour at the time, were incorporated into standard shipbuilding practice and are found in today's cruise ships.

In another first, the SS Rotterdam was decorated with original artwork by the most celebrated Dutch artists of the time, who gave the ship an intimacy and immediacy not equalled since.

SETTING THE TONE With the SS Rotterdam, the Holland America Line set the tone which the company has carefully maintained ever since: HAL ships cater to the connoisseurs of the cruising world. They keep an unsurpassed level of cleanliness – The Spotless Fleet – as became clear earlier this year when a surprise inspection by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) aboard the MV Veendam, berthed in Boston at the start of

a seven-day cruise to the Bermudas, earned the vessel a perfect score of 100 percent compliance.

An unannounced inspection by Health Canada at Halifax in Nova Scotia likewise resulted in another spotless report. The MS Eurodam, another HAL cruise liner, last March succeeded in obtaining its tenth consecutive perfect-score health inspection.

Holland America Line cruise ship are, perhaps, not for everyone: those seeking big, bad, and loud thrills may find the unassuming and understated luxury that characterise life aboard HAL ships slightly unsettling.

This is a fleet of ultramodern high luxury cruise vessels that carry not just passengers, but also a long and proud tradition.

A perpetual quest for perfection keeps progress on the road Toyota spends more than $10bn annually on automotive research and development.

The Toyota Prius scooped the market as the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle and has sold almost six million units worldwide dabbled in the all-electric vehicle segment, although it did register promising results with two generations of the Rav EV destined for the emissions-conscious California market. Between 1997 and 2014, close to 4,000 units of the compact SUV were leased to the public – with most lessees opting the buy the vehicle at the end of the contract.

However, the Rav EV had a range of barely 160km and its battery pack, deemed a consumable item, cost more to replace than the car was worth. With a drive-away price of around $29,000, after $14,000 in fiscal rebates, the small all-electric SUV proved a hit and allowed to Toyota to dip its corporate toe in the EV (electric vehicle) market to gauge its sentiment.

However, Toyota thinks the future points elsewhere. The company diverted considerable resources to the development and marketing of the hydrogen-powered Mirai car, using fuel cell technology, one of the first of its kind to be offered.

The Mirai (“future” in Japanese), pictured left, was unveiled at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show and went on sale the following year.

Though production volumes remain low, the four-door sedan is being sold as fast as it rolls off

the assembly line. The car retails for about $57,000 in the US. The 2017 Mirai is nothing short of a breakthrough: it covers a distance of up to 500km on a single tank with a fuel economy of 79 mpge (miles per gallon equivalent). The US Environmental Protection Agency has certified Mirai as the most efficient hydrogen fuel cell vehicle on the market and the one offering the largest range. Toyota Motor Corporation is now ready to face the driverless future.

The company predicts that truly autonomous vehicles will remain in the realm of science fiction for a few more decades, and has instead decided to concentrate on technologies to improve the interface and interaction between driver and vehicle. To do that, the company recently launched the $1bn Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley, Michigan, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The institute, run by robotics researcher Gill Pratt, has already established partnerships with Stanford University and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Stanford's research into artificial intelligence may be leveraged to keep drowsy drivers safe and help anticipate possible trouble.

Traditionally, Toyota Motor Corporation had led the automobile industry by implementing small, continuous design changes to arrive at a revolutionary result.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

THAT investment nets the company ongoing improvements to everything from seatbelt and airbag design to handling, precision engineering, and ergonomics.

But to keep its leading edge, the Toyota Motor Corporation is expected to significantly increase its research and development budget to catch up with Silicon Valley upstarts such as Google and Tesla Motors in the development of autonomous vehicles – the driverless cars of the future.

While Toyota has traditionally relied on high-tech manufacturing techniques to produce top-quality cars at competitive prices, the company was caught napping as moneyed and visionary entrepreneurs and companies started tinkering with selfdriving cars in the US. Autonomous vehicle technology is fast approaching mass market deployment, with US lawmakers already preparing the required legislation and insurance companies pondering potentially thorny risk and liability questions.

Toyota scooped the market with the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle, the Prius. Since its introduction in 1997, the Prius went on to sell over 5.7 million units worldwide. The car is now in its fourth generation and remains the most fuel efficient non-plug-in vehicle available.

So far, the company has only

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James Park Wii will rock you, Fitbit crunches the data

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PEOPLE WHEN serial entrepreneur James Park dropped out of Harvard, he did so with a smile on his face: he had a better plan.

During college, Park was a Nintendo Wii obsessive, playing games on the console morning, noon and night. He was enthralled with how the Wii sensors reacted with its software. Soon, like most successful entrepreneurs, he began looking for next-stage improvements.

The irony of his Wii obsession, however, was that Park felt he was becoming unfit, so he looked to create a device that could form an affordable hybrid of basic pedometers and lavish sports watches.

In 2007 he formed Fitbit with Eric Friedman, raising a staggering $400,000 from family and friends to create a start-up company that found itself on the brink of collapse half a dozen times. On each occasion, Park and Friedman overcame the company's difficulties.

Fitbit has now more than 30 million wristbands and clip-on activity trackers that are the must-have for health-conscious celebrities. The devices are able to monitor every movement.

Park wears his own product, but it's doubtful he's losing much sleep – last year, his entry as #29 in the Forbes list of 40 Under 40 showed his personal wealth nudge the $660m mark.

The key to Park's continued success, however, seems to be getting ahead of the game for future technologies. Despite obvious competition from Apple Watch, he has sanctioned a massive $150m to be pumped into research for the next generation of Fitbit's wearables.

Of course, there's also a little fighting talk in his rhetoric towards his rival: “I think it's a great product, and Apple's a great company,” he says.

“But it's a product that probably does too much.”

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Football stars with business From ‘Brand Beckham’ to the sporting whizzkids swapping the changing room for the boardroom, today's footballers are going from boots to suits when the final whistle blows. NAOMI SNELLING looks at who has the acumen to make it in business IT'S HARDLY surprising that players with the self-discipline, team spirit, commitment and focus to make it in top-level football are able to transfer those skills to business.

And they don't always wait until they've played their last game before they start planning. Premier League left-back favourite and Fintech entrepreneur, Ryan Bertrand, characterises a whole new trend for players to develop a business life in parallel with their football career.

Bertrand, who famously helped Southampton to the upper echelons of the Premiership and was part of England's Euro 2016 line-up, teamed up with two friends in 2015 to launch brokerage firm Silicon Markets.

The company, which includes an FX trading arm, is based in the City of London and aims to attract first-time traders as well as existing those already in the thick of things. Essentially, it offers free artificial intelligence and machine learning software to retail traders – an offering that disrupts

current trading models, which normally charge for such services.

As well as FX, Silicon Markets delivers trading on indices and commodities via a number of platforms, including MT4 and Tradable.

In the same way that a celebrity clothing line or perfume can conjure up a baseline of support with little effort, Bertrand and co-founders Louis Bell and Fintech specialist Matthew Kirkham, have capitalised on the player's high profile to attract and capitalise on key marketing opportunities to boost awareness of the enterprise.

Silicon Markets isn't Bertrand's only business venture. In 2016, he teamed up with fellow Premier League footballers Jose Fonte and John Terry to launch the Footiemoji app – the electronic equivalent of football stickers.

The app allows its users to buy football themed emoji packs for mobile phone messaging, and was launched in advance of

Euro 2016 and Copa America.

Given the money surrounding the world of football, players have long enjoyed supplementary income opportunities to boost their regular eyepopping pay checks. Lucrative sponsorship deals and image rights contracts are a valuable second income stream – but they do tend to dry up once the player's footballing days are over.

Savvy players, like Bertrand, get ahead of the game and market themselves both on and off the pitch, while they're still a valuable commodity. And plenty of other players are at it too. Former Leeds and England defender Danny Mills, became a partner in the £7.5m private equity firm Enact – which famously bought the West Cornwall Pasty Company out of administration, saving 274 jobs at 34 stores.

Liverpool striker, Michael Owen, ploughed money and energy into one of the more typical pursuits of footballers – horse racing – but, unusually, he managed

Beckham’s business interests have ranged from a US Major League Soccer franchise to fashion brands 66

Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock.com

nous go from pitch to rich

Chelsea left-back favourite and erstwhile Fintech entrepreneur Ryan Bertrand to turn it into a business. He owns a 90-horse stable in Cheshire, under the watchful eye of trainer Tom Dascombe.

After hanging up his boots for Stoke City, Owen took up an offer to be a TV commentator with BT Sport, earning £1m a year, and he now runs Michael Owen Management for young footballers.

The footballer-to-businessman route isn't restricted to the Premier League players – as a number of semi-pros are proving.

Rob Jones, who once played in the UEFA cup, co-founded fantasy sports giant FanDuel in 2009. He and his team spotted an opportunity to introduce daily fantasy sports to America – a faster, more condensed way of playing than the usual season-long team selection.

The fantasy sports sensation is valued at more than $1bn, and names Google Capital, KKR and Time Warner/Turner Sports among its investors.

FanDuel boasts partnerships with 16 National Football League teams and its deal with Orlando Magic Stadium

incorporates the FanDuel magic stadium experience.

Registered user numbers have soared exponentially, and FanDuel now has over six million members – and counting.

Meanwhile, app downloads have hit the four million mark.

Following its rip-roaring success in America, FanDuel has designed a daily fantasy football product for UK soccer fans and plans to launch it in time for the English Premier League.

Women players are proving, in business and on the football pitch, that they too have more than one string to their bow.

Midfielder Jade Moore represented England at junior levels before making her debut for the senior national team in 2012.

In 2013, the same year that she represented England at the UEFA Women's Euros, Moore set up her own Birmingham-based sports therapy business.

Called BeMore UK, it caters for sports and other injuries, and focuses on high quality physiotherapy, sports therapy and

deep tissue massage – as well as offering personal training, acupuncture and general wellness advice.

Of course, nothing beats David Beckham's seamless transition into ‘ordinary' life. Famous for his bending free-kicks and range of passing and crossing ability as a right winger, Beckham remains a global ambassador for football and a British cultural icon.

Now a businessman, model and spokesperson, Beckham's business interests have ranged from a US Major League Soccer franchise to fashion brands, contracts with Jaguar and much more.

Beckham's net worth was recently valued at around £40m – double that of his wife, Victoria.

Although such astronomical returns might be reaching too high for the average footballer, there's plenty of proof that winning on the pitch can transfer to wins in the boardroom.

One thing is for sure – “game over” now has a whole new meaning for today's footballers.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Mitch Gunn / Shutterstock.com

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Camel racing hits its stride as The sport is making a massive comeback in the UAE, thanks to some new technology. Meet the ‘biscuit tin' that's proving to be a winner for everyone

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PEOPLE have been racing camels on the plains that envelope Abu Dhabi for centuries, and in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf the sport is more popular than any kind of horse racing you might find anywhere in the world.

A recent government-backed report discovered that syndicated ownership of racing camels stretched to most households in the state. Entire families have stakes of various worth in the animals, with shares often being given as presents for birthdays and new births.

Moreover, it’s a massive, almost incalculably rich business, with the winner’s purse sometimes rising to a massive $3m.

What doesn’t appear normal, however, is the jockey. It isn’t a child jockey any more, after concerns for the safety and welfare of the youngsters used to pilot the gangling beasts. It is a contraption containing a motor from a Bosch drill. Duct-taped to this is a wireless receiver.

ART PROJECT He puts a brightly-coloured lid over the components, then attaches a plastic arm to the side of the box. To the untrained eye, it looks like a junior school art project where the brief was decorate a biscuit tin and glue a stick on it.

And while it may not look like much, this biscuit tin has been the decisive factor in bringing camel racing back from the dead and returning it to the pinnacle of sport-related business in the Middle East.

Camel racing has been in serious decline. After centuries of mass popularity the governments of most Middle East nations brought in legislations to regulate the sport. The main aim of the laws was to put a stop to the child deaths which had blighted camel racing throughout much of its history.

Grown men are too heavy to allow

robot jockeys take the saddle

a camel the freedom to run to its maximum potential, so children as young as five were often employed as jockeys. The practice was outlawed in 2002, and the sport fell into stagnation.

JOCKEY-LESS TRIALS Jockey-less trials were held, with instructions shouted to the camels from the great cavalcade of cars which career along specially-built roads parallel to the track. Races lost their appeal until, three years ago, a few bright sparks pulled together an experiment to see if they could recreate the effect of a jockey using a robot.

At first, the elder members of the camel racing community mocked the idea, but, gradually, the robots were refined until the thrill of the old races was more or less matched or replaced by the well-dressed biscuit tins.

Today, the crowds have returned to the levels experienced pre-legislation.

The purses and the amount of cash flowing around the business of the sport

however, have almost doubled and the revenues of enterprises connected with camel racing have rocketed.

One market which has seen an astonishing surge in revenues is honey production. The finest, most expensive camels are fed up to a kilogram of honey a day, with some batches costing in the region of 11,000 dirhams ($3,000) a kilo.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS Race lengths vary – dependant on the camels’ age – from 1.5 kilometres and eight kilometres. Between races the camels are fed special supplements and trained with cardio and strength work.

And it pays off – for everyone.

The average stable costs for a raceready camel come in at around 5,000 dirhams ($1,300) a month and with that comes all the paraphernalia one would expect from a thoroughbred stable – trainers, dieticians, transport.

Then there are veterinary services.

The number of vets in the UAE over

the last 10 years has risen three-fold; in a bid to safeguard the integrity of the sport, every camel registered to race has to have its blood tested on a weekly basis.

Although the robots and controls are typically home-made by the handlers, robot jockeys and devices can now be purchased off-the-shelf for about 5,500 dirhams.

The robots have a speaker through which the handler can bark their orders at the camel via their hand-held microphone, and a whip is operated remotely by the handlers who cling onto the back of pick-up trucks in the cavalcade.

The horde of vehicles is almost as fascinating to witness as the camels being ridden by robots. Beat-up Nissans kick up the same dust as the vehicles of the excited wealthy observers who join the melee in vehicles bearing the badges of Bentley, Lamborghini, and Rolls-Royce.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Technology has replaced child jockeys with robots, making the sport less dangerous and more popular

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New cold war in high street as The British frozen food chain Iceland found itself in hot water with its namesake country. DARREN PARKIN reports on a war that just won’t thaw IN WHAT could be the missing script from an unmade Ealing comedy, the government of the sparsely-populated North Atlantic republic last year launched a legal action against the high street frozen food supermarket over the trademark of its name.

It said the British chain was preventing Icelandic companies from using the word “Iceland” in their titles, and had pursued and won legal cases against Icelandic companies that tried.

The frozen food company has Europewide trademark registration for the word “Iceland”, but the Icelandic government complained that this meant the country's firms couldn't describe their products as Icelandic.

Fish sales company Iceland Gold and wholesaler Clean Iceland both tried, and failed, to register their names with the EU. The legal dispute has shown no signs of being resolved, and a long, drawn-out wrangle is likely.

Iceland the company, meanwhile, says it has happily traded for nigh-on half a century without any confusion between

“We simply want to ensure that Iceland Foods will ease off from preventing Icelandic firms registering the word ‘Iceland' across the EU” itself and the island, and suggests it has the established rights to the name.

The fight over who has the historic or established rights to the name Iceland has been simmering for many years. Iceland's ministry for foreign affairs has been taking verbal swipes at the UK chain on and off for much of the last decade.

The ministry said in a statement: “The Icelandic government's legal challenge at the European Intellectual Property Office seeks to invalidate this exclusive registration on the basis that the term ‘Iceland' is exceptionally broad and

ambiguous in definition, often rendering the country's firms unable to describe their products as Icelandic.”

The frozen food giant seems reluctant to be drawn in, to the inevitable legal battle, making noises about how it laments the loss of any affable discussion prior to the legal action. Bosses at the firm's Deeside headquarters claim they have received precious few friendly entreaties from the North Atlantic nation's government.

“While we will vigorously defend Iceland Foods' established rights where there is any risk of confusion between our business and Iceland the country, we have been trading successfully for 46 years under the name Iceland and do not believe that any serious confusion or conflict has ever arisen in the public mind, or is likely to do so,” the company said in a statement.

“We very much regret that the government of Iceland has apparently decided to take legal action over the use of the name Iceland, and we hope that the government will contact us directly so that

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lennystan / Shutterstock.com

Iceland takes on Iceland

we may address their concerns.”

One of the most compelling aspects of the legal battle concerns history – the Nordic country's, as well as the food chain's brand heritage. Many onlookers would instantly side with Reykjavik's point of view, dismissing Iceland Foods as having nothing to do with the country other than hijacking its name. But that's not entirely the case.

When the legal battle gets under way, lawyers will be quick to pick up on the fact that the company was part-owned by Baugur – an Icelandic retail conglomerate which built up a controlling stake in the firm soon after it was launched in Oswestry in early 1970.

Baugur held this stake right up until the catastrophic collapse of Iceland's banks in 2009. Two surviving banks – Glitnir and Landsbanki – picked up the pieces until a management buyout put things back into the hands of chief executive and founder Malcolm Walker. Walker is in partnership with South African entrepreneur Christo Wiese, whose company Brait hold a

controlling 57 percent stake in Iceland.

Brait also has large stakes in Virgin Active and New Look.

The legal move came at a time when Iceland was enjoying high street success. There were years when the chain was dismissed as a cheap, lower-end supermarket, but slick marketing and the introduction of more recognised brands such as Pizza Express and Slimming World has seen its star rising.

However, Iceland's government ministers stress that the issue isn't about urging the grocer to drop the name “Iceland”. Instead it is more concerned with forcing the retailer to be less aggressive in its dogged pursuit of Icelandic businesses wishing to use the name as part of their branding. The legal challenge is likely to be closer to a cancellation action not a cessation notice.

“We simply want to ensure that Iceland Foods will ease off from preventing Icelandic firms registering the word ‘Iceland' across the EU,” says Jon Asbergsson, managing director of

government body Promote Iceland.

“At the end of the day, we are not looking for a great conflict – just a common-sense outcome where each party can live and let live.”

Asbergsson's words appear to have fallen on deaf ears in Deeside, where a certain belligerence seems to be developing.

Far from being the last word in what has the potential to become one of the more interesting corporation dust-ups of the century, Iceland Foods answered the country's call for an amicable settlement with further provocative talk.

“We are not aware that our use of the Iceland name has ever caused any confusion with Iceland the country,” a spokesman said.

“Iceland Foods has traded under the Iceland name in the UK since 1970, and is today one of the UK's most recognised brands. We have also traded as Iceland for many years in other EU countries, and in non-EU countries, including Iceland itself.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Iceland the country: firms are unable to describe their products as Icelandic

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Howard Hughes, a man of Business magnate, visionary, philanthropist, investor, adventurer, film-maker, inventor and all-round eccentric: the man who did everything differently

ECCENTRICITY defined the life of business tycoon Howard Hughes, a man who would drive himself to the edge of madness with his obsessive desire to see his visions become reality.

Hughes lived a life of strange confusion, often sent into spiralling turmoil due to his severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – a condition which few understood at the time.

Confusion was a recurring theme in Hughes' life. No one knew exactly when he was born; he claimed to have come into the world on Christmas Eve 1905, but various records and documents suggest

it could have been three months earlier.

No documentation can pinpoint Hughes' birthplace either – Houston or Humble are the likely candidates but the mystery of his origins only adds to the aura of myth that surrounded him over seven decades.

The youngster's entrepreneurial spirit was fostered from an early age by his father, English inventor Howard R Hughes Sr, who had invented and patented the two-cone roller bit – a dull-sounding but ground-breaking piece of equipment which revolutionised the oil industry. It allowed rotary drilling to take place in previously inaccessible places, and helped

THE ‘SPRUCE GOOSE’ COMPARED WITH MODERN AIRCRAFT

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to forge the US's place in the oil business.

Hughes Sr was a shrewd businessman.

Realising how important his invention was, he chose to commercialise it by not actually selling the bits he had patented.

Instead, he leased the units and made a fortune in the process.

His father's success sparked a deep fascination in science and technology for the young Texan, who began to show an increasing aptitude for engineering. At the age of 11 he built Houston's first wireless radio transmitter and became one of the first licensed ham radio operators in America.

CAPTIVATED BY MATHS At just 12 years old, Hughes invented his own motorised bicycle, fashioned from parts of a steam engine his father had thrown out.

He became captivated by mathematics, mechanics and – above all else – flying. He was only 14 when he began flying lessons before going on to study aeronautical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

The likeable young man was demonstrating all the signs of going on to become a great leader and pioneer in the field of engineering. But, while still a teenager, Hughes' life was to change dramatically. His lust for life and passion for invention came to a halt when his mother Allene died through the complications of an ectopic pregnancy.

The death took a serious toll on his father's health and, less than two years later, Howard Hughes Sr died of a massive heart attack.

It is said Howard Hughes never really recovered from the death of his beloved parents, but the tragedy did inspire his philanthropic activities. When he turned 19, Hughes was declared an “emancipated minor” and inherited three-quarters of his father's sizeable fortune.

One of his first acts was to establish a medical research laboratory in honour of his parents.

Slowly, the heir became more withdrawn. First, he pulled out of Rice University, where he had been showing great promise, then from various social circles where he had been the popular life and soul of many parties. He did keep up one of his great passions – golf. Often playing alone, he would spend almost every day on a course. On the rare occasions when he did feel sociable, he would play – to a notable three handicap – with some of America's top professionals.

PURSUING HIS DREAMS Eventually, his enthusiasm for sport waned and Hughes withdrew further into himself until, in June 1925, he married Ella Botts Rice – a family friend. Ella encouraged her new husband, who was becoming increasingly reclusive and gripped by OCD, to pursue his dreams of being a film-maker by moving to Los Angeles.

The move was a success, in terms of Hughes' ambition for success as a movie producer. But it was a disaster for the marriage. By 1929 Ella had moved back to Houston and was talking to divorce lawyers.

HELL'S ANGELS At the time, Hughes himself was in the throes of producing Hell's Angels – a World War I epic featuring some of the most daring aerial fight sequences ever filmed. Three pilots were killed during the making of the movie. Hughes became profoundly infatuated by the film, ploughing nearly $4m into it against the advice of many colleagues.

No one expected Hughes to recover any of his investment, but in his own unique style he proved the detractors wrong when Hell's Angels pulled in almost $8m at the box office and an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinemaphotography.

His marriage may have ended, but in Hughes' eyes, his life was just beginning.

Although continuing to suffer with OCD, he was less of a recluse. He made more movies, enjoyed more romances, made even more money, and soon began to develop visions of grand projects.

Soon after the success of Hell's Angels, Hughes founded his own aircraft company. Typically, he immersed himself into every aspect of the business. Not only

Hughes founded his own aircraft company did he design planes, he would be in the factory at all hours, tinkering and fixing while construction was under way. He also insisted on testing the untried planes himself, often risking his own life.

SPRUCE GOOSE Amid all the derring-do and attempts at world air speed records, there was also some genuinely brilliant business vision in his many innovations. For instance, Hughes is credited with inventing

retractable landing gear.

Then came the Spruce Goose. To many, the H-4 Hercules (it was given the name “Spruce Goose” by cynical members of the press) was effectively Howard Hughes' Waterloo. He spent years labouring on the colossal wooden seaplane. His idea was to create a giant air transporter that could deliver troops and equipment across the Atlantic to the European theatre during the Second

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mystery and millions

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continued from previous page World War. He became so obsessed with trying to perfect the aircraft that he didn't complete the project until 1947 – two years after the war had ended.

The aircraft flew only once, for a mile at 70ft, with Hughes at the controls.

It was slated as a huge failure. His belief in the H-4 never faltered and, unable to let it go, he kept the giant machine in a specially-built, climate-controlled hangar.

It remained there, in perfect airworthy condition, until his death in 1976. It is currently housed at Oregon's Evergreen Aviation Museum.

CRITICISM Adamant the H-4 was the future of military transport, Hughes did not take the criticism at all well. He became deeply gripped by his OCD and began slipping

back into the reclusive life.

In the days after completion of the H-4 project Hughes locked himself away in his screening room – a large cinema in his sprawling home – where he repeatedly watched Hell's Angels and reviewed some of the movies he was producing at the time.

TRANS WORLD AIRLINES He remained in the screening room for four months, sustaining himself on little more than chocolate and milk. In contrast to the chronic OCD which had seen him unable to touch door handles or shake a stranger's hand without scrubbing his own hands repeatedly, he did not bathe for the entire four months. By the time he emerged, his fingernails and grown into twisted spirals, his hair had become

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matted, and some of his teeth had rotted.

He rallied slightly when called to an antitrust meeting over Trans World Airlines – one of his many businesses – but he failed to attend. Instead, he chose to live in a series of hotel penthouses, locking himself away for months at a time and developing an addiction to Valium. At one hotel – the Desert Inn – he was asked to vacate the room. He refused, and instead bought the entire hotel before leaving for another inn just a few days later, on his own terms.

This self-imposed imprisonment continued until his death in 1976. As with the uncertainty of his birth, his death also came with a degree of confusion. The official report states he died at 1.27pm on April 5, aboard an aircraft en route to the Houston Methodist Hospital from his penthouse at the lavish Acapulco Fairmont Princess Hotel in Mexico.

Many associates dispute this, claiming he died on a fight from the Bahamas to Houston. No one really knows why there should have been any sort of confusion, but it seems altogether fitting for Howard Hughes. He had, after all, lived a life of great eccentricity, bookended by confusion.

BUSINESS VISIONARY For many, the reclusive eccentric was the extent of the persona of Howard Hughes. It appears almost absurd that he could be considered a great business visionary.

Yet, here was a man – deeply troubled by his own demons and socially crippled by a condition that few understood – who was capable of making great and successful investments at which many had baulked. His Summa Corporation, as it later became known, spent decades at the forefront of industries like aerospace, media, hospitality, defence, electronics and manufacturing.

His property portfolio was so vast that its true worth and total geography is still being calculated.

In 1972, when many of his companies and interests were brought under the Summa, much of his fortune was, at his request, bequeathed to philanthropic causes. Some were public, some were secret.

The Howard Hughes Foundation continues to create surprises with bequests that slip under the radar of the outside world. And that's just how Howard Hughes would have liked it.

Sallie Krawcheck Mind the gap – and follow Sallie

10

BEING ousted from a company during restructuring is never pleasant: for many, it's duvet days, crises of confidence or impulse-booking of a holiday somewhere far, far away.

Sallie Krawcheck's experience was a little different. For a start, the blow was probably somewhat softened by the $6million tucked in her goodbye card. But she gave herself just 24 hours in which to chill out with a couple of cocktails and regroup.

Krawcheck was one of the most powerful women on Wall Street before being shown the door by Bank of America in 2011. She began contacting former colleagues: not to moan or get reassurance, she says, but “to use the experience as a chance to learn something. She asked them what she could have done better.”

Krawcheck acquired 85 Broads, a women's business network, and turned it into Ellevate Network. She had what she calls “an a-ha! moment” in 2005 – when she acknowledged the importance of diversity in the workplace.

“When you're in those corporate jobs running 1,000 miles per hour, you have X amount of time for reflection,” she says.

“I always had diverse teams. But I started thinking about what could make the industry safer [in terms of investments]. There were lots of issues. Greed. Capital.

Liquidity. I approach everything like a research analyst.”

She launched Ellevest, a digital investment advisor (or robo advisor – though she hates that term) for women. “Women have been told: ‘You need to work harder, you need remedial financial education, you need more hand-holding…'” she says.

Ellevest aims to help address the shortfall the average woman has in her retirement savings compared with a man's. Investing has typically been by men, for men, as she sees it. With this latest venture, the plan is to empower women financially and help them reach their goals.

“It's time to turn our attention to another gender gap,” she says. “The investing gap.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PEOPLE

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THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN ‘Up in the air' takes on a whole new meaning WHEN Monarch Airlines announced it had ceased trading on October 2, 2017, it sent shockwaves through the industry – especially for the dramatic way events unfolded, leaving thousands of bewildered passengers stranded.

But it was just the latest in a series of high-profile failures in the aviation industry in 2017, a year when several factors caused turbulence of a different sort, and not witnessed for some time.

On May 2, Alitalia, Italy's national carrier started bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in a decade after its highlyunionised workforce rejected job-cuts and changes to working practices; shareholders then voted unanimously for special administration.

Paolo Gentiloni's government extended a €600,000,000 (£508m) bridging loan to keep the airline afloat for six months – but has ruled out nationalisation, against a political backdrop where 77 percent of weary Italians said in an opinion poll that it should just be allowed to fail.

RESTRUCTURED ALITALIA On October 16, the BBC reported that Lufthansa and Easy Jet had submitted offers to buy parts of the airline. Easy Jet only wanted “certain assets of a restructured Alitalia”. And Lufthansa “was only interested in parts of the existing business”.

The Corriere Della Sera, Milan's daily newspaper, said that Rome was not interested in letting companies cherry-pick and intended to sell all assets as a complete package. Alitalia continues to limp along.

On August 15, Air Berlin, Germany's second-largest airline, entered insolvency procedures. After exhaustive restructuring efforts – including Lufthansa buying 81 aircraft and employing 3,000 Air Berlin workers, at a cost of €210,000,000 – the company made its last flight on October 27, from Munich to Berlin. The final flight made a fly-over of Berlin, watched from Tegel Airport by 1,600 staff members.

What both these airlines had in common was that Etihad, Abu Dhabi's prestigious carrier, had a large stake in both, acquiring 29 percent of Air Berlin in December 2011 and 49 percent of Alitalia in August 2014. It has shareholdings in several other airlines.

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“Etihad had a very ambitious and creative – but very risky – strategy, which was to invest in airlines in different countries to gain a proxy presence as an airline group, and two of its riskiest investments were Air Berlin and Alitalia,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst for Atmosphere Research Group, told Business Insider magazine.

Gerald Wissel, of Airborne Consulting in Hamburg, said, “Etihad failed to understand the differences between doing business in the Middle East and in Europe, where, for example, there are unions.”

In July, Etihad announced a $1.87 billion loss – and the company's gung-ho CEO, James Hogan, left. Their investments and falling oil prices meant that Abu Dhabi could no longer sustain his strategy.

In July, Norwegian Air's CFO Frode Foss resigned after 15 years. Industry journal Leehan News speculated that Norwegian Air might be in trouble due to overambitious fleet expansion.

The Scandinavian carrier, seen as a safe bet, had been hit by mounting fuel, personnel, leasing and technical costs and been forced to sell part of its 20 percent share in Bank Norwegian to cover its losses.

Together, the cost changes increased operating expenses by 45 percent, on a revenue increase of 17 percent.

Then in September we had the debacle of Ryanair cancelling up to 50 flights. The Irish pilots´ union IALPA claimed that 700 of 4,200 pilots who had flown for Ryanair had left.

The irascible Ryanair CEO Michael O´Leary got into trouble with the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) for telling passengers that he did not have to arrange new flights for them, and then failing to tell passengers they could be rerouted with other airlines if there were no suitable alternatives.

Benefiting from their rivals' woes, Easy Jet has just reported a ten percent increase in passenger numbers for October.

There are likely to be more upheavals in this most competitive of industries. To paraphrase the legendary words of Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis in the film All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.”

JASON AGNEW

SPEAKING: PANIC! PANIC! Remain in your seats and keep your safety belts fastened. It’s been a turbulent time in the skies as airline finances loop, swoop, stall and fail. Business Vision staff look at the trials and tribulations between the vapour trails and closing doors

Alejandro Lampre Velázquez

THE CELEBRATIONS to mark Monarch's 50th anniversary as a commercial airline were already in the advanced planning stage. April 5, 2018, was to be a day to cheer five decades of success as an airline that was as popular with its customers as it was with its 2,100 staff.

Then, after a few cataclysmic days for Monarch and its owners, the party has been well and truly cancelled.

The private equity firm which owned the popular airline says the total cost of its collapse will take years to calculate as it stares into a £250m abyss.

What went so ruinously wrong for the operator, and why did the decision to shut everything down occur so abruptly? That's a question that only Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas can answer with any degree of clarity.

The Meyohas brothers are the founders of Greybull Capital – the private equity firm now left picking up the pieces of one of the world's biggest airline collapses.

The secretive French brothers have been in business for many years and have a string of insolvencies and liquidations to their name. Despite the business mantra of making “long-term investments in private companies”, Monarch is the fourth Greybull-owned business to be declared insolvent in the past six years.

Before the Luton-based airline came to an end on October 2, the equity firm had previously seen electrical retailer

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Monarch bites the dust days short of five decades

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Comet, Riley's Sports Bars, and the former Morrison's-owned convenience store chain M all go under.

From their plush Knightsbridge offices – less than a minute's walk from Harrods Greybull offered a hint of contrition over the swift implosion that finished Monarch as a company. In the wake of the closure, the firm's website carried nothing but one simple statement.

“We are very sorry that we have not been able to turn around the Monarch group and for all the inconvenience and distress that this administration will cause,” the statement read.

WORKED SO HARD “We would like to thank all the employees, partners and stakeholders who have worked so hard over the past three years to try and make the Monarch Group a success.”

Monarch had been a success. It had a collection of awards and plaudits for efficiency, customer service and safety.

The public reaction to its demise at times resembled an outpouring of grief. It was a well-loved airline. Honest and uncynical towards its customers, it's hard to imagine the loss of, say, Ryanair, being met with such sadness.

The accounts show that there were times when Monarch had been making a profit, and looked like it had the potential to do so again.

Even the Meyohas brothers must have believed this when they purchased 90 percent of the business in 2014, declaring: “We are delighted to acquire Monarch and invest our capital into a very strong brand

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Greybull's maneouvres behind the scenes with great potential.”

Within 12 months, Greybull had The Financial Times singing its praises and stating that Monarch had been transformed under their leadership as 2015 saw the airline's first whiff of profit in more than three years.

Behind the scenes, though, Greybull were looking to “explore strategic options” for Monarch which included expanding – potentially with a European partner – before selling up.

IMMINENT BANKRUPTCY Nothing materialised, yet Greybull kept filling the financial holes that Monarch was creating up to the third quarter of 2016 as rumours of imminent bankruptcy were brushed aside.

At some point, in Greybull's Mayfair offices, where the Meyohas brothers were encamped on Saturday, September 30, a conversation between them and Andrew Swaffield – the CEO at Monarch's Luton Airport headquarters – led to them decide that enough was enough.

Monarch couldn't be saved and the plug was pulled, leaving 860,000

passengers without flights.

Marc Meyohas was quick to blame the weakness of the pound, terrorism in the Middle East, and Brexit for the biggest business failure in British aviation history. It can't be denied there are several contributing factors.

But there may be other lines of enquiry. For instance, only a year after Greybull threw £165m into Monarch just to keep it afloat in 2016, the troubled airline inexplicably ordered 15 aircraft from Boeing – in addition to the 30 it had already sanctioned. The extra 15 alone were valued at £1.3bn.

Bullish business decisions like that will certainly require some answers.

Blair Nimmo, administrator with KPMG, was appointed to lead the windingup process, and he says there appears to be little that can be done for the 2,100 Monarch staff – particularly the 1,858 who were made redundant just as soon as Andrew Swaffield clicked “send” on an email to staff at 3.26am on Monday, October 2.

Nimmo, stating the company had run out of options by having its aircraft grounded, said the most pressing course of action was to “realise the assets in due course”.

With its whole fleet of planes on lease, it's hard to see just what assets the company could have – particularly when Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd (Monarch's service and maintenance arm) announced it would continue as a standalone business, seemingly immune from the unfolding mess.

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JET-SETTING… BUDGET STYLE The glamour may be gone, but the flying carries on. Frequent-flier MALCOLM JONES reports from seat 2A I AM sitting in my favourite seat, 2A, and I can see the lights of Bilbao below.

I've lost count of the number of times I've looked down at the city heading back to London for a meeting or to spend a weekend with my family. I am one of an everincreasing number of passengers – judging by conversations with my fellow travellers – who treat the low-cost airline network in the same way as previousw generations treated the train network.

We move around from airport to airport, using the same routes time and time again. We know exactly how finely we can cut it and still make our flights. So many times I've overheard the muttered comments as I join the end of the priority queue to cut in front of the less-frequent fliers. “Don't know why they pay the extra, they won't get there any faster…”

The reason is simple: the business of flying, and going through airports, is tedious. The less time spent getting from A to B, the better. I have become a creature of habit, just like the regular commuter who arrives at the station at exactly the right time to board their train and sits in their favourite seat.

Unlike the rail network, however, the explosion of low-cost carriers has provided regular travellers with a choice of airlines – each with their pros and cons. I have found that I now would rather avoid a “flag carrier”, even if the price is the same (which it often is), especially if bookings are made within a few days of flying.

The reasons are simple. The coffee is better, for a start – even when EasyJet made the ludicrous (now reversed) decision to use coffee bags. One has to question the sanity of who thought passengers would enjoy burning their fingers trying to remove them from the cup with a flimsy plastic stirrer.

And if you want a snack, or have missed dinner, you can choose what you want, rather than receiving a complimentary cup of warm dishwater and a slightly soggy croissant. But even more important than the coffee… no reclining seats!

Space is tight enough and when the slightly hungover holidaymaker decides it's time for 40 winks on a BA flight and presses the recline button you are forced to do the same if you want enough space to use a laptop. That causes an unpleasant ripple effect down the aircraft, as well.

But these are all tiny issues. The network of flights now available is allowing a generation of regular travellers to move around with unprecedented ease (but without any of the glamour of the early jetsetters, it has to be said).

The pilot has just come over intercom to inform us we are passing Jersey (to our left) and will shortly begin our decent. I must at some point break my pattern and visit Jersey or Bilbao. Maybe next year.

The slow decent into London Gatwick has started. Let's see if I get can score an upgraded car when I land, and let's count how many people mutter when I queuejump with my frequent-user privileges…

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

MAEL has 730 staff employed across six airports in the UK, with maintenance stations at Nice, Malaga, Kiev and Warsaw.

It's interesting to note that, despite the service becoming a standalone company from Monarch, Andrew Swaffield – Monarch's CEO – is also listed as an active director of MAEL. CRITICISM Furthermore, Swaffield also registered a company called Alcedo Consulting Services Ltd with the UK government's Companies House on October 2. This was only days after he registered a company called Shelfco 2017 Ltd. Swaffield took much of the criticism over the Monarch debacle, particularly from disgruntled staff who were taken aback by his email explaining the company was going into administration.

Only a week earlier he had sent a somewhat jovial email urging employees to ignore what they read in the press and to “have a good week”. Less than seven days later he was condemning most of the staff to redundancies, citing a £60m loss this year, with a projected loss in excess of £100m for 2018 as reasons to bring the business to a halt.

EMOTIONAL REACTION Despite the emotional reaction to Monarch's passing by customers and staff, some analysts are already playing down the influence its collapse will have on the industry. Shares in rival firms spiked, but are expected to level off within weeks.

Damien Brewer, of RBC Capital Markets, said Monarch's expiry was “an un-regal exit with marginal impact”, highlighting that the airline would have only made up 1.7 percent of outbound and inbound flights at UK airports this winter.

Business Vision approached Swaffield seeking clarification on the nature of the two businesses he registered shortly before, and on, the day the company went into administration, as well as clarification of his position at Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd. He did not respond.

Greybull was also invited to comment.

Again, we received no response.

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Cork industry pulls out all the stops to stay afloat It's found in bottles, shoes, crypt floors and space ships: JASON AGNEW raises his glass to toast a natural wonder

WHEN MANY of us think of cork – and I don't know what that reveals about us – our minds naturally visualise a bottle of wine, the wonderful sound of a clean extraction and the overwhelming disappointment when the wine proves to have been contaminated with TCA (trichloroanisole) or, in the common parlance, corked.

In fact cork, the bark of the Quercus suber or cork oak tree, is an incredibly versatile material which turns up in some rather unexpected places.

If you venture down into the crypt of Gaudi's inimitable Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, you will be treading on a cork floor, chosen for its durability, repairability and acoustic absorption properties. Fitted in 2010, we will never know if the great architect would have approved.

It has also been employed in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Milan, in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo and in the Cape Town Stadium. In 2000, the Portuguese Pavilion in the Shanghai

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When Australia and New Zealand introduced metal screw tops to their wine bottles it was viewed with disdain Expo was built entirely of cork, as was the interior of the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, a collaboration between the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron and the Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei.

The fashion world, endlessly seeking novelty, has embraced it. According to the Baltimore Sun, designers such as Ralph Lauren, Diane Von Furstenberg and Kate Spade have all found success incorporating the material – and sometimes pattern –

into their offerings.

Cork can be found in cars, on buses, in trains, bridges and airports. It is used as protection for heat shields on spacecrafts (it's cork, Jim, but not as we know it).

In shuttlecocks and baseballs, in surfboards as well as dartboards, in vaccines and cosmetics, the list of uses is so long it makes your head spin more than that magical liquid it has been preserving in bottles for over 400 years since. (As legend would have it, Dom Perignon discarded the-then traditional oily rag and insisted on cork for his sparkling new invention.)

And it is to oenology – the study of wines – that we must return.

As impressive as the above list is, the 13 billion wine stoppers manufactured and sold by Portuguese producers in 2015 (Cork Quality Council) accounted for 72 percent of their revenue, or €644,000,000 – compared with the €228,000,000 derived from construction.

Any challenge or threat to this

historical hegemony in the world of bottlestopping must be taken very seriously indeed.

When the Australians and New Zealanders started introducing metal screw tops to their wine bottles, many viewed this development with a certain level of disdain. Trust them to be different.

But there was method to their madness.

First off, if you're an Antipodean wine producer, importing cork from southern Europe is expensive, plus the wineries felt they were getting the dregs of the cork crop. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the genesis for the switch can be traced to the 1970s, when cork-soled shoes were in fashion. Back then, international designers had first pick of Portugal's finest cork supplies, for which they paid a premium.

SECOND-RATE CORKS Those next in line for top quality cork were Europe's best and oldest winemakers, and at the back of the queue were secondary wine markets, such as Australia.

These second-rate corks led to many batches of wine being spoiled. Nowadays, 99 in every hundred bottles in Australia have a screw cap.

And they were not alone. According to The Atlantic, a test of 2,800 bottles of wine for TCA in 2005found seven percent of the bottles were contaminated. “For consumers, the chances of buying spoiled wine were relatively low.

But for a winemaker, whose name and reputation are on the line with every sip, a single bad bottle could damage the brand's reputation and undermine the entire business,” the magazine concluded.

Synthetic closures – screw tops had

now been joined by plastic plugs – were cheaper, produced no taint, and were consistent in oxygen transmission. As one shop owner said, “Screw caps are just easier to use and people like that, even wine drinkers”.

So, was the death knell tolling for cork? Not quite.

BORDEAUX REFUSES The first line of defence forw the industry was good, old-fashioned snobbery.

Screw tops and synthetics only work for relatively young wines, as they let in small amounts of oxygen. Good (vintage) wine tends to appreciate with age, and the Mouton-Rothschilds and other chateaux in Bordeaux refused to have anything to do with them.

However, the high-end is only a tiny part of the market, so that was not going to be enough to save cork.

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Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Cork forests around the Mediterranean region provide lush shade as well as their famous product

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continued from previous page The traditional European wineproducing countries proved more obstinate, and continued using it, but this trade alone would not be sufficient to keep the industry at anywhere near its former market size.

EMERGING MARKETS It was markets such as the UK, the US and emerging markets such as China and Brazil where the battle had to be won.

And the only way to win was to make taint such a rare occurrence that people didn't really consider it when making their wine purchase.

Corticeira Amorim, the world's largest cork producer, is based in the small northern Portuguese town of Mozelos, about 25 kilometres south of Porto. It started employing state-of-the-art technology to solve the problem.

The company began a process called ‘gas chromatography' which can screen the cork in 20 seconds to see if there are any imperfections. They claim that this has reduced the TCA level to 0.7 per cent, which in practical terms means that – with a one-in-150 chance of buying a “corked” bottle – it ceases to become a consideration.

Sustainability has become a big issue, and here cork comes out the winner. The

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Quercus suber is an interesting tree in that the bark cannot be touched for 25 years, but can then be extracted every nine years.

Done properly, there is no damage to the tree, which live for 300 years. Cork oak forests support a unique biodiversity and protect many endangered species, while creating a carbon sink.

As Carlos de Jesus, head of marketing and corporate communications at Amorim, said: “Over the years Corticeira Amorim has reinforced its strategic commitment to sustainable development and the protection of cork and cork oak forests, in its economic, social and environmental aspects.

NATURAL AND RECYCLABLE “In addition to processing a 100 percent natural and recyclable product, by harvesting cork bark without cutting down trees, the company actually contributes to the preservation and viability of the cork oak forests, both in Portugal and abroad.”

Cork is completely biodegradable, whereas both screw tops and synthetic stoppers need to be recycled.

Current estimates are that around a third of metal tops, and less than a quarter of plastic closures, are recycled – which means there are a lot of them lying around discarded causing damage to the

environment.

The cork industry has staged a comeback and thanks to the technology to reduce taint, and Portuguese exports have rallied to equal their peak of the year 2000, while Amorim´s share price has risen almost six-fold.

NOBLE IDEALS It is estimated that cork´s share of the market has recovered to 70 percent from just over half the market eight years ago.

As a consumer, this might leave you feeling somewhat perplexed. There are many considerations, and what started out as a simple exercise begins to take on moral dimensions that might make you wish you hadn't bothered to get involved in the first place.

The most noble ideals – preserving those carbon-absorbing forests in the Iberian Peninsula – and the most banal – “Do we have a cork screw at home?” – must be considered.

One wine writer summed it up by pointing out that it all depends on whether you prefer the age-old ritual and ceremony of extracting the cork from the bottle, or you are more content with the simplicity of unscrewing the top and pouring.

I'll drink to either as long as you have the correct glass. Cheers!

Cork is harvested every nine years without harming the tree

Rufus Griscom & Alisa Volkman From sex to parenting to Babble and beyond…

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THE idea of turning parenting into a corporate mission would be enough to reduce most mums and dads to dribbling wrecks, but when Rufus Griscom and his wife Alisa Volkman sat up in the early hours feeding their newborn son, they could see – even through half-asleep eyes – there was an opportunity amid the fog of bottle warmers, sterilisers and nappies.

Their pre-dawn chats involved plenty of discussion about what it takes to be a parent – all the insecurities, uncertainties and questions of whether or not they were doing it right.

It didn't take long before they realised their own concerns needed a wider audience. Before their new-born was a year old, their whispered businesses meetings by the changing table were steering them towards launching a website for parents.

The pair were no strangers to digital platforms, they already ran a reasonably successful website. Just not one that ignited conversation about nappy rash, potty training and teething. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were the brains behind Nerve.com – a website dedicated entirely to sex, albeit with a stylish, almost avant-garde approach to the subject.

However, the pair took the transition in their stride and quickly launched Babble – a website which continues to draw in millions of users every day to share experiences of parenting problems.

Babble was an instant hit. Although sitting on a significant personal fortune, some of the funds from the acquisition of Nerve and Babble have allowed Griscom to plough money into his latest online venture – Heleo, a website designed to give great thinkers and writers a worldwide platform.

Heleo, like Nerve and Babble before it, is extremely US-centric. You could even narrow that to “New York orientated”. But insiders say that a UK version of Griscom's latest brainchild could soon see light of day.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PEOPLE

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The booming business of war When American writer PJ O'Rourke spent the autumn of 1984 in Lebanon as the country's civil war began to heat up, the hotel receptionist in Beirut asked him whether he'd like a room ‘on the car bomb side, or the mortar bomb side'.

TONY LENNOX reports

O'ROURKE'S comical but graphic account of the horror and confusion of a country in a catastrophic spiral of self-destruction never made it into the pages of Vanity Fair magazine; no-one needed a travelogue in a country with no tourists.

O'Rourke predicted that he would probably be the last western journalist to travel to Lebanon without being abducted.

Not long afterwards, British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped. He spent the next five years chained up in the Beirut cell with Irish teacher Brian Keenan and other hostages.

Keenan, in his account of that time, An Evil Cradling, recognised the parallels between the sectarian conflict he had known in Northern Ireland, and the one into which he was pitched.

BRINK OF DISASTER Lebanon still teeters on the brink of disaster, but now the catalyst is the fighting in neighbouring Syria. Keenan, who now lives in Dublin, might see the similarities with Ireland.

During the 1970s and 80s, the Republic of Ireland's economy went into a tailspin, partly due to the troubles in the north. It wasn't until the Good Friday agreement, which brought a measure

O’Rourke penned a travelogue on “a country with no tourists” 84

“The wise traveler [to Beirut] will pack shirts or blouses with ample breast pockets.

Reaching inside a jacket for your passport looks too much like going for the draw and puts armed men out of countenance.” ...

“You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city — you don’t need to go to Beirut for that — but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.”

PJ O’Rourke

of stability, that the Republic began its journey to Celtic Tiger status.

Todd Sandler, professor of International Relations and Economics at University of Southern California, has studied the effects of civil war on neighbouring countries.

His writings describe the destructive nature of the spill-over: instability, collateral damage, disruption to trade, diversion of foreign investment and influx of refugees. His work references these factors mostly in relation to wars in modern Africa.

An example is the land-locked African country of Chad: politically unstable, but made virtually ungovernable by wars and terrorism in neighbouring Libya, Sudan, and Nigeria.

The woes of Lebanon stem partly from the country's fragile situation, following a civil war which lasted from 1975 to 1990.

The disintegration of Lebanon, from the jewel of the eastern Mediterranean to hell-hole, shocked the globe. The capital, Beirut – once a sophisticated cosmopolitan city, famed for its French and Ottoman architecture, fabulous cuisine and the ease with which Christianity and Islam lived side by side – became a byword for ferocious sectarianism.

TOURISM Tourism, at the time worth 10 percent of the country's total economy, ceased.

Visitors used to flock to Beirut, the Paris of the East, from all quarters. The ancient Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon were magnets for those in search of history. The Gulf nations have advised citizens not to travel to former holiday destinations in Lebanon because of security fears.

The war in Syria is entering its sixth year. It is estimated that the influx of up to 1.5 million Syrians (a quarter of the total population of Lebanon), has sent unemployment soaring. As many as 300,000 Lebanese workers have lost their jobs in the past five years. The blame, they say, lies with incomers prepared to work for lower wages. The refugees are imposing a great strain on infrastructure – welfare aid, medicine, jobs.

At the same time, veterans of the Middle East, like seasoned British journalist Robert Fisk, say Lebanese employers are exploiting the situation.

Syrian refugee children, he says, are being used as virtual slave labour, picking fruit in farms in the Bekaa Valley for pennies.

The war has also disrupted overland imports into Lebanon, which had previously relied on corridors through Syria from Jordan and Iraq and beyond.

The overland routes are not safe – and in some cases they no longer exist. The cost of importing and exporting by air freight is adding to costs, leading to the inflation of food prices in Lebanon.

Banking has traditionally been the

and the slim spectre of hope

mainstay of Lebanon's services-oriented economy, but the government has had to pledge the bulk of its resources to reconstruction, which has led to a high level of public debt. Lebanon depends on foreign cash, but direct investment from overseas is being hampered by bureaucracy, corruption and high taxes.

Rafic Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister from 1992 to 1998, is credited with rebuilding Beirut following the civil war.

A moderate and pragmatist, he worked with Syrian overlords to reconstruct the Lebanese economy – but it was an open secret that he personally profited from his position. His own construction company bought chunks of the capital at a fraction of their value. His personal fortune had increased from $1billion to $16 billion by the time of his assassination in 2005.

A succession of wily politicians and officials has continued to follow Hariri's example. Corruption in the system is widespread, and the current political paralysis is only encouraging corruption.

The country has been without a president since May 2014 because of divisions

between Christians, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Government institutions no longer function.

The World Bank, in its latest Lebanese report, warns that the continuing stagnation in government, as much as the effects of the war on Lebanon's doorstep, is a serious challenge.

PUBLIC DEBT Could Lebanon go bankrupt? It isn't impossible. The burden of public debt, which has soared in the past five years, coupled with the country's sluggish growth, is widening the fiscal deficit. GDP growth has virtually stalled. It is estimated that the cost to the Lebanese economy of the war in Syria has exceeded $7 billion – the equivalent of 15 percent of GDP. Citizens of Beirut have taken to the streets in massive protests. The genesis of the demonstrations was the catastrophic collapse of the city's waste disposal operations. Land-fill sites were full, so rubSbish simply piled up on the streets.

The protests grew to incorporate a more general discontent with the government, widely perceived as corrupt

and incompetent. An encouraging element of the dissent was its lack of sectarianism: the demonstrators came equally from Christian, Sunni and Shi'ite communities in Beirut. This could be seen as a sign that Lebanon may one day return to the balance that made the country the Switzerland of the East.

The main hope must be an end to the war in Syria, however unlikely that appears right now. The World Bank estimates that the rebuilding of Syria could be worth $200 billion to business and industry – and Lebanon, being Syria's main route to the Mediterranean, would be well-placed to grab a hefty slice. Businesspeople and policy-makers are already said to be preparing the ground for Lebanon to become the hub of that restoration process.

But there is also a fear that sectarian divisions, reignited by the war in Syria, could lead to a new civil conflict in Lebanon. As P.J. O'Rourke observed in 1984: “In Lebanon you'd be crazy not to have a gun. Though, I assure you, all the crazy people have guns, too.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Sectarian conflict left scars on Beirut and its people

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Is Mark Zuckerberg priming From privileged Ivy League boy to a business leader with the belief that anything is possible, where is it all leading?

by DARREN PARKIN WHILE the world huddled in front of television screens watching American and British troops taking their first steps into Iraq to topple Saddam Hussain, a 19-yearold American student was camped in his Harvard dormitory, honing his ideas for a website.

Around one in 20 of the world's population viewed the televised invasion.

Years later, one in four is glued to Facebook – the website that our wstudent started creating in 2003.

At the time, that student, Mark Zuckerberg, had no real inkling that his programme could one day go on to be the most successful and popular website ever created. To him, it was nothing more than an experimental site designed to allow the students and staff of the university's nine houses get a better understanding of who everyone was.

World-changing events took place across the globe as he sat in a corner with his computer, but Zuckerberg was striking the keys that would launch his own bid to change the world.

There can be no argument that he achieved what he set out to do. But what

happens when one conquers the world in such a short space of time? What happens next?

For a man who created the ultimate platform for over-sharing, Zuckerberg is a private individual. The world knows enough about him to understand he is a genius hell-bent on improving our lives and doing humankind a favour. Few are able to peer inside the inner workings of his mind to comprehend his drives and motivations.

NO RAGS-TO-RICHES CLICHE For those looking for a rags-to-riches story, there is mild deflation. Zuckerberg didn't grow up having to sell homegrown vegetables from a basket on his broken bike to help provide for his mother.

There's no poor-boy-makes-good cliché to be had here.

Zuckerberg has a reasonably privileged background. He was born in 1984 amid the vast houses of White Plains – a swanky city within desirable Westchester County, New York. His mother – Karen Kempner – was a psychiatrist, and his father Edward was a dentist.

The high-earning Zuckerbergs moved their son and his sisters Randi, Donna and

Arielle to the stylish Dobbs Ferry, so both parents could be within easy reach of their clients.

Zuckerberg attended the Ardsley High School, where it became apparent that Mr and Mrs Zuckerberg had underestimated their son. He excelled in almost every subject, and his parents enrolled him at the exclusive Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire just months after his Bar Mitzvah.

He soon began to rack up prizes for mathematics, physics, astronomy and classics, prompting his parents to pack him off to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.

Zuckerberg was evidently destined for great things.

When he launched “Thefacebook” to the Harvard campus, the keen computer programmer had already had some success with sites he had developed for his fellow students. “Coursematch” which helped students to find the courses they were best suited to, was a great success.

Less popular was “Facematch”, a program which randomly presented two faces from different college houses and invited the user to decide “which one

Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com

Mark Zuckerberg at G8-G20 joint meeting in Deauville, France 86

himself to be next POTUS? FACTS OF FACEBOOK

• • • • • • • •

There are 1.95 billion active Facebook users, with 1.28 billion logging in every day The most common age group, at 29.8 percent, comprises 25- to 34-year-olds Every minute, an average of 300 new user profiles is created Most traffic is logged mid-week between 1pm and 3pm, with engagement being higher on Thursdays and Fridays The current number of fake profiles stands at 83 million 300 million photos are uploaded every day, while 510,000 comments are posted every minute In the US, Facebook accounts for one in five of all page views across the internet There are more than 20 million business pages on Facebook

new desire – politics perhaps? To some, this notion sounds far-fetched.

As implausible as it sounds, once the scattered jigsaw pieces of evidence are in place, the idea of an ambition to hold the free world's highest office isn't quite as bizarre as it may appear.

At the start of this year, just days before Donald Trump was sworn into office, the notoriously withdrawn Zuckerberg proclaimed that his personal challenge for 2017 was to visit every state of the USA to meet the American people face-to-face.

In February, he posted a 5,700-word article about the future of Facebook which sounded very much like a State of the Union address.

EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUIT His extraordinary circuit began in the US motoring state of Michigan, where he sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Ford workers before hopping from state to state. He surprised a family in Ohio who had invited him to their home.

He then posted pictures of himself on Facebook from his visit to Indiana, where he greeted firefighters of the Elkhart Fire Department before taking a tour of South Bend with the town's mayor, Peter Buttigieg.

Next to pop up on his timeline was calf-feeding on a Wisconsin farm while trying the local cheese curd delicacy for delighted onlookers.

Zuckerberg and his philanthropist wife, Pricilla Chan, have done good work

with their staggering wealth. Their vast charitable donations go largely unreported as a way preserving some integrity and honour to their endeavours.

One of the few redeeming features that gave Donald Trump the keys to the White House was his impressive business acumen – something that many voters clearly felt was badly needed. Trump's net worth is $3.5bn, a figure which pales in comparison with Zuckerberg's $63bn fortune.

POLITICAL AMBITION Zuckerberg has repeatedly denied holding any political ambition. The tour of the nation prompted many questions, but each one has been rebuffed. He claims that he and his wife were promoting the “Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative” – a philanthropic drive to use their business wealth for the advancement of human potential.

A few years ago, any suggestion that even someone with the level of public popularity which Zuckerberg enjoys could possibly become the leader of the free world would have been laughed off.

However, now that most of the world has had time to digest the fact that a property magnate and reality TV personality is now the holder of a briefcase containing the codes to the US's nuclear weapons arsenal, the prospect of President Zuckerberg sounds like it has a nice ring to it.

Experts are divided on Zuckerberg's

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Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

is hottest”. As an experiment, it paved the way for a choice-based social media platform. Zuckerberg was slammed for the sexist tone of his creation.

In an Ivy League campus, this sort of roguish notoriety would often inflate a needy ego. But the effect it had on Zuckerberg was quite different. The fallout from the Facematch experiment left him devastated. The thought that he may have caused offence to fellow students wounded him.

Zuckerberg took to locking himself away for days on end, refusing to socialise.

Those close to him thought the episode might have sent him into a depression.

Instead, he was motivated to right his wrongs.

Within weeks, “thefacebook” was launched. Its original concept was to profile students and staff. After launching the site, Zuckerberg went out for the first time in weeks and met his friends in a bar. By the following day, more than 1,200 people had signed up to the site.

Before the month was out, nearly half the undergraduate population of 22,000 had a profile.

SPREADING HIS CREATION Zuckerberg could see he was onto something big, and promptly extended thefacebook to neighbouring universities.

By the end of 2004 it was available to all US universities before its creator purchased the Facebook.com address for $200,000 and began spreading his creation worldwide.

Today, there are almost two billion Facebook users in a global population of almost eight billion – a staggering statistic that represents the biggest uptake of anything in history… including religion.

Without doubt, it's an unprecedented success. And one that is perhaps yet to reach its pinnacle.

The regular tweaks and updates to Facebook would suggest Zuckerberg and his senior partners frequently grow tired of their own creation, and are keen to tinker with it. It has undergone, on average, at least one major overhaul every seven months.

But does this constant need to improve Facebook belie a greater need? Perhaps Zuckerberg has his heart set on an entirely

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continued from previous page intentions. Many believe he is laying the foundations of a future presidential campaign, but some find it hard to understand why someone so successful in business would want to put themselves in the firing line.

Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton suggests becoming president may represent a step down for the founder of the biggest website in the world.

CONSENSUS “When I've asked people in Silicon Valley if a Zuckerberg bid is potentially real, the consensus seem to be ‘absolutely', on the whole,” he says. “But, as the chief of Facebook, isn't he already the true leader of the free world?”

Perhaps more will become clear as we draw nearer to the presidential elections due to take place in 2020 and 2024.

But before making up your mind, remember one of Zuckerberg's most significant mantras from the last decade or so: “The question I ask myself almost every day is: ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?'”

Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock.com

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Chinese whispers, pints of bitter and … the dawn of a new era?

Over the centuries, trade deals between the UK and China have ebbed and flowed with success and unwitting insult. Some meetings have been resolved with democracy, others sorted out over a pint. Business Vision's TONY LENNOX examines why one little bit of history keeps repeating

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AMERICAN president Donald Trump has been heaping on the praise for Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping since recent confirmation of the Chinese politician's second term of office.

Trump has picked Beijing as critical to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, and there has been something of a PR bromance between the two leaders, both of whom are set on restoring their nations to greatness.

Britain's relationship with China, and President Xi, has been shaded with rather more controversy. As the red carpet was rolled out for Chinese president Xi Jinping on a recent state visit to the UK, critics at home and abroad accused Britain of “kowtowing” to the eastern superpower.

BARBARIANS' SOCKS It was not the first time the word had been used in reference to China. Members of a British trade delegation to Beijing in the late 1700s refused to kowtow when they were brought into the presence of the emperor.

This apparent insult to the majesty of “the son of heaven” was initially forgiven by the Chinese who reasonably assumed that the barbarians' socks were too tight to allow them to kneel.

When later deputations of diplomats and traders continued this impertinence, China, to whom ritual was the cornerstone of civilisation, began to regard the British with suspicion. The reputation thus earned by these “insolent and crafty savages” took root – and has never really disappeared.

The word “kowtow” actually came into the language via British interaction with China. Back in the 18th century China was an advanced society, comfortable in its supreme position in its sphere. It had little knowledge or experience of the west.

Britons who traded along its southern

shores were just some of a number of strange and uncultured brutes who exchanged interesting trinkets for tea, porcelain and silks.

The Cantonese word for those coarse English traders was Ying-ji-li; today the word is commonly used in China in reference to a popular brand of razor – an indication, perhaps, of the type of trade that was being carried on between the two countries at the time.

But that relationship was to change – in a ruthless manner. For Chinese historians, the modern era is generally accepted to have begun in 1820 with an Anglo-Chinese conflict – the first Opium War. The effect of this encounter still has resonance in China today. British imperial arrogance in its treatment of the Chinese may have been almost forgotten in the UK, but those old wounds still sting in China.

While British Prime Minister Theresa May has spoken of rekindling of a “golden era” of trade between the UK and China, Chinese schoolchildren are still following a Maoist curriculum which teaches that

the first golden era was a one-sided affair which resulted in much shameful kowtowing to western imperialists.

This historical perspective still colours China's attitude to Britain. It is alleged that on the eve of his visit to Britain in 2014, the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang insisted that if his hosts couldn't engineer a meeting with the Queen, the trip was off.

ECONOMIC MIGHT At around the same time, a popular Chinese tabloid savagely mocked the decline of the UK in comparison with the economic might of modern China.

Referring to bygone wrongs which still resonate with the Chinese, the newspaper said: “Britain is no longer any kind of ‘big country' but merely a country of old Europe suitable only for tourism and overseas students, with a few decent football teams.”

President Xi Jinping is known to have a keen interest in football, and would like to see China contesting for the top honours on the world stage. And Chinese money is flowing into the domestic game in the UK. At least 25 of England's top clubs are

The red carpet was rolled out for Chinese president Xi Jinping on a recent state visit to the UK

now in Chinese ownership, the latest being one of the famous founders of the Football League – Wolverhampton Wanderers. The rescue of old football clubs is one activity at least where deep-rooted grievances can perhaps be overlooked.

But British diplomats have sometimes found themselves engaged in damage limitation, smoothing over perceived slights and insults which threaten to derail greater trade between the two countries.

Relations have become very frosty over the issue of the Dalai Lama.

Tensions over China's activity in Tibet, together with alleged human rights violations in Chinese society, regularly bring condemnation from bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These concerns have been ramped up as post-Brexit Britain looks to China for greater trade. The UK should not be kowtowing to one of the world's most authoritarian regimes, they say.

Nevertheless, British firms are queueing for a slice of the trade, worth an estimated $62 billion, which was lined

up following Mr Xi Jinping's state visit to London last year. David Cameron famously sealed the deal by giving the Chinese leader a taste of 21st century British culture – a fish supper and a pint of bitter, perhaps an attempt to prove that the British Empire is dead and buried.

HUMAN RIGHTS Despite the protests of human rights groups, May has been pushing ahead with attempts to persuade the Chinese to invest in various infrastructure projects, many of them in the north of England.

Meanwhile, newly rich Chinese individuals are spending heavily on property in the UK, particularly in London and the south-east.

Part of the attraction for the Chinese is London's global status as a financial centre. Earlier this year China used London to issue its first ever offshore sovereign bond.

The City recently ousted Singapore as the world's largest offshore clearing centre outside China for Chinese currency.

The hangover from the Brexit vote

puts greater pressure on British firms to find new, stable friends abroad. Many are pinning their hopes on renewed trade with the east. And while Mrs May's opendoor policy is persuading the Chinese to increase their investment in domestic spheres like technology and the provision of power, many question the wisdom of giving the world's largest Communist state unchallenged access to such nationally sensitive areas.

On the eve of the first Opium War, the Chinese emperor was encouraged by his counsellors to believe that Britain would fall into poverty if it was deprived of Chinese tea, then a major item of trade.

The idea grew that without China's “tea and rhubarb” the British, whose fondness for milk and cheese was wellknown, would soon find their intestines blocked and would be incapable of waging war.

But while most of Britain's tea comes, these days, from Africa, kowtowing to the Chinese may still run the risk of causing some serious stomach aches.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Frame China / Shutterstock.com

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New York's blue-collar blues: Is paranoia over vanishing industrial heritage keeping the city that never sleeps awake? TONY LENNOX examines the changing face of commerce in The Big Apple IN 1863, at the height of the American Civil War, the editor and staff of The New York Times – abandoning the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword – employed a Gatling gun to repel anti-draft rioters who were laying siege to their Manhattan offices.

Though a relatively minor incident in the war, the riots were evidence that New Yorkers were never afraid to be different from, and sometimes contrary to, their fellow Americans. Sympathy and support for the Confederate cause was considerable in New York. Many jobs in the city and state relied on the cotton trade with the southern states – and there was a genuine fear among working class New Yorkers, many of whom were recent immigrants themselves, that emancipated slaves would take their jobs.

New York was then, and still is, the archetypal working-class city. New Yorkers are pugnacious in defence of their industrial traditions, to the point, some say, of protectionism. But the city's gritty, selfconfident persona is being undermined by a growing insecurity. The big question being asked is: does New York, the world's

greatest industrial city, actually make anything anymore?

The de-industrialisation of the developed world's big cities has been in relentless motion for decades, but in New York the decline has been bigger and faster than almost anywhere on earth.

Many believe that, far from being a natural evolution, the disappearance of New York's myriad factories and workshops is part of a deliberate strategy.

UNCOMPROMISING FORCES The ranks of traditional blue-collar workers who made New York the industrial titan of the 20th century are slugging it out with the uncompromising forces of new capitalism – and apparently losing. New York's urban industries are being backed into a corner as the city witnesses a massive shift away from manufacturing to the services sector – finance, business services, entertainment, and, most invasive of all, real estate.

It is estimated that in the last halfcentury more than a million of the city's manual jobs have disappeared. At the end of the Second World War, New York's blue-collar workforce outnumbered the

professional classes by more than three to one. That situation has been completely reversed. Today's surviving factories face tough competition from foreign imports and a scarcity of land which is limiting factory size – and any development.

Illustrating the variety of activities that once powered the city, the author Joshua B. Freeman, in his book, Working-Class New York, says: “In 1945 … just blocks from Wall Street, where paper symbols of property – securities, bonds, and commodity futures – were traded, there were wholesale markets for butter, eggs, cheese, tea, coffee and spices where not just the ownership of those goods, but the goods themselves were exchanged.”

Observers of New York's plunge from those heady days believe that a succession of political leaders have been lured by the corporate dollar – deliberately supporting the development of high-rent commercial and residential development. And not just in Manhattan, but increasingly in the industrial zones of the city's other, less fashionable boroughs. This has put the squeeze on conventional, small and medium scale factories and workshops;

Graffiti covers the remaining walls of an old New York factory — now replaced by an apartment building 92

Lewis Tse Pui Lung / Shutterstock.com

if you can make it there…

In 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to protect the city’s key manufacturing areas from speculators

the effect being the destruction of the city's traditional industries in once stable neighbourhoods.

In 2015 New York's new Democrat mayor, Bill de Blasio, made a promise to protect the city's core manufacturing areas from property speculators as hotels, office buildings, and warehouses began to encroach on the old industrial areas.

Some thought this was too little, too late.

The so-called “gentrification” of places like Brooklyn and Queens is pushing up rents (which are already among the most expensive in the US), and is blamed for driving low-wage workers from their traditional urban strongholds.

Meanwhile, the suspicion is growing that the “elite” forces behind this urban revolution are tightening their grip on the city. A law enacted in New York this year prevents citizens offering short-term rentals when they're not in their own homes and apartments. The so-called “Airbnb ruling” is apparently aimed at protecting visitors from illegal hotels, and an attempt to keep a lid on the soaring cost of rents in the city. Critics claim the law is an example of regressive protectionism, shielding the powerful hotel and hospitality industry from competition. Hotel rooms in New York are among the highest-priced in the world.

Protectionism is a word used on both

De-industrialisation ‘aimed to create more intense and profitable use of land, building better jobs and more prosperity’ sides. Those who want to see New York reformed into a city which encourages a new class of entrepreneur, whose creativity and innovation is essential to the city's future prosperity, frequently point to the power once wielded by the city's manual workers. The original city of skyscrapers has regularly been held to ransom by unionised activity.

A strike by 15,000 elevator operators and maintenance workers in commercial buildings in 1945, for instance, brought New York to a standstill. Faced with taking the stairs, thousands of the city's workers stayed at home. The city lost millions of dollars in the space of a few hours.

It will come as no surprise that the leading industry in New York today is financial services, which accounts for 15 percent of the economy, closely followed by professional, scientific and technical services – the business-to-business firms which knit the whole fabric of the economy together.

Health care is a major employer in New York city and state, while the retail and food sector accounts for $230 billion of the total economy.

Manufacturing, which once dominated, comes in a poor fifth – and while still a relatively large part of the economy, it is declining rapidly. In his controversial book, The Assassination Of New York, the late writer Robert Fitch predicted further decline.

He railed against the financial and property elites who worked to increase the value of land, driving out low-rent families and factories, replacing them with highrent professionals and office buildings.

Fitch argued that the de-industrialisation of New York was not a natural effect. He blamed the speculators in land values, and claimed that the probable fall-out from job losses would create a consumer belttightening which would cripple the city's economy.

Fitch's critics argued that deindustrialisation aimed to create more intense and profitable use of land, building better jobs and more prosperity.

Dorothy Parker, the 20th century's most celebrated and acerbic wielder of New York wit, once said: “New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

a katz / Shutterstock.com

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Is Monaco's underbelly tainting its shine?

Where there's muck, there's brass – and the reverse sometimes holds true. Business Vision's TONY LENNOX takes a look at the famous Carre d'Or to see if Monaco is losing its glamour to grime

A DESIGNER of luxury yachts, based on the fringes of Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, recently unveiled plans for a 150-metre floating island – in the style of Monaco's legendary streets.

The proposal involves a collection of iconic Monaco features – including a racetrack – erected on the superstructure of a vast catamaran. Also envisaged is an oasis garden, modelled on the principality's Monte Carlo casino, with shrub-lined pathways, a spa, cinema, dance hall, wine cellar, library, café bar and fully equipped gym. The cost of such a yacht, which remains as yet unbuilt, is estimated at £700 million.

There are billionaires who might seriously consider such a purchase – which, according to many commentators who reviewed the yacht concept, proves the adage that money doesn't necessarily buy taste.

FLAMBOYANT Monaco's inhabitants and visitors have never been shy when it comes to flamboyant displays of wealth. Its name has been synonymous with the super-rich for more than a century. Indeed, British music hall audiences knew by heart the words of the song “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” as early as 1892. The song refers to the actions of the notorious gambler and confidence trickster Charles Wells, who scooped a million francs at the gaming tables using cash obtained by fraud. Riches have always attracted rogues – and Monaco has been the backdrop to many such tales, both in fiction and in fact.

The latest local scandal to excite the world's tabloids involved 50s Italian screen siren Gina Lollobrigida, who owns a villa in the principality. She became embroiled

in a public spat with her much younger former partner who, she claimed, had married her “without her knowledge”. Now in her eighties, ‘La Lollo' is just one of the rich, famous and glamorous headlinegrabbers who call Monaco home.

It is estimated that more than a third of the residents who cram themselves into the microstate are millionaires – and quite a few are billionaires. The principality boasts citizens of almost every country and culture. The luxury yachts of Arab sheiks and movie stars bump up alongside those of Russian Oligarchs and American tycoons on the lavish shoreline.

TAX HAVEN Monaco's status as a tax haven has attracted the wealthy (and the crooked)

continued on next page

continued from previous page for decades. President Charles de Gaulle became so infuriated by the number of his countrymen using the principality as a bolt hole for their cash that he actually blockaded it in 1963. The story of the crisis is told in the 2014 film Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly, the actress who married into the colourful Grimaldi dynasty, becoming the world's most celebrated princess – and who turned Monaco into the place to be.

FRAGILE REPUTATION The fact that Monaco relied almost exclusively on France for all its needs made the quarrel all the more painful for the world's second-smallest state (after the Vatican). A tax treaty was drawn up which gave the bigger country certain exclusive exemptions in terms of the traditional secrecy enjoyed by those who bank in Monaco.

Monaco's fragile reputation was again tarnished in 2013, when art lovers prepared to mark the anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso -- another celebrated resident of the principality -with an exhibition of his work.

As Monaco's Albert II, inevitably known as the Playboy Prince, prepared to launch a star-studded festival of the artist's life and works, a tempest was brewing around the family of a contributor to the exhibition. Allegations of money laundering, illegal gambling and the

Monaco is a haven for the well-heeled and well-known involvement of the Russian mafia washed around like unwelcome flotsam in an exclusive marina.

Marie-Claude Beaud, the director of Monaco's National Art Museum, said: “I don't know whether the allegations are true or false, that's not the problem. All the nasty rumours people spread about Monaco can be found boiled down in this one story.”

The controversy threatened to derail official attempts to portray the principality as a legitimate, albeit high-rolling casino venue and sanctuary for the rich – though definitely not tax exiles.

GLAMOUR Monaco has been working hard to change that. Today the country charges almost 20 percent VAT, collects stamp duties, and levies 33 percent tax on businesses whose profits are not generated within its borders.

It used to be second nature for the world's royalty and the über-rich to gather

there, but times change. In 2009 Monaco's GDP fell by 11.5 percent as the crisis in the euro-zone led to a severe decline in tourism, shopping and property sales.

Although it has seen a slight recovery, Monaco's prospects remain uncertain.

Public finances have deteriorated and Monaco has recorded several consecutive years of low growth. And although the OECD removed the country from its “grey list” of unhelpful tax regimes in 2009, Monaco continues to come under global pressure to tackle tax evasion and abandon its banking secrecy laws.

The well-heeled, well-known and wellendowed have always enjoyed Monaco as a haven in the sun, a place to keep one's money safe or find a rich husband or wife.

It still attracts people with money.

Why? Well it's virtually crime-free, there's CCTV on every corner, one policeman for every 72 citizens -- and paparazzi are banned. The chief reason, though, endures – tax.

Not every celebrity is impressed. The actor Jack Nicholson once said: “Monaco is Alcatraz for the rich.” And at least one internationally famous racing driver, Australia's Mark Webber, isn't keen on the place, either.

He says: “I love driving at Monaco but the rest of it, well, I can absolutely take it or leave it. It's extremely pretentious and really not my cup of tea.”

The £700 million Streets of Monaco yacht, designed in Nottingham 96

For SABIC, close enough is never good enough

SABIC headquarters in Riyadh

electronics, polymeric-responsive materials, microalgae, bio-aromatics, bio-specialities, cost-effective production of H2, CO2 as a reactant, and CH4 activation.

SABIC's principle corporate offices and headquarters are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with major industrial operations in the city of Al-Jubail on the Arabian Gulf, as well as in Yanbu on the Red Sea. The company's manufacturing, sales, technology and innovation facilities are located across the globe and are managed by four regional offices: the Middle East and Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe.

GLOBAL PRESENCE SABIC's global presence continues to grow, with the company's plans for expansion matched by the development of an infrastructure of manufacturing plants, technology centres, distribution centres, offices and storage facilities.

Its success is driven by its customers' success, and SABIC works hard to develop

an understanding of clients' commercial ambitions, and the way in which companies compete within an industry.

In all areas – whether it's in aircraft or rail interiors, food packaging or heavyduty vehicles – specific challenges demand specific solutions. SABIC understands that “close enough” isn't good enough: you need materials that have been specially engineered to provide precise levels of performance.

Heat resistance, safety, impact resistance and chemical resistance must combine with colour, aesthetics and manufacturability. Strength and durability must marry with UV resistance and regulatory compliance, and SABIC aims to excel in every category.

The company understands that longterm relationships are built on strong chemistry, and its desire to collaborate sets SABIC apart from its competitors in the petrochemicals industry.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

YOU MAY not have heard of SABIC, but the chances are you've come into contact with some of the company's products.

The toothpaste tube you squeezed first thing this morning, the seat you had to fight for on the train, the plastic bag you're carrying your lunch in, the interior of the jet that will carry you to your next business meeting or holiday destination… all these and more are very likely to have come from one of SABIC's operations around the world.

The range of products and services SABIC produces could fill Business Vision from cover to cover. SABIC is a public company based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and is ranked among the world's largest petrochemicals manufacturers.

It all began in 1976 by Royal decree when the Saudi Arabian government decided to use the hydrocarbon gases associated with its oil production as the principal feedstock for the production of chemicals, polymers and fertilizers. Today the company has a global workforce of more than 35,000 in 50 countries.

STRATEGIC UNITS SABIC is composed of four strategic business units – Petrochemicals, Specialties, Agri-Nutrients, and Metals – each headed by an executive vicepresident. They support customers by identifying and developing opportunities in key end markets such as construction, medical devices, packaging, agri-nutrients, electrical and electronics, transportation and clean energy.

The company invests heavily in technology and innovation, with dedicated facilities spread across the globe with hundreds of scientists contributing to the ongoing development of new patents and certifications.

SABIC works with leading universities, institutes, and research facilities; strategic partnerships which promote collaboration in chemistry, material science, process engineering, and analytical and application technology.

Long-term technology programs on strategic areas include non-conventional feedstock, solar energy, flexible

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Bezos gets the wind up from Controversial chief puts his faith in the elements with massive investments in clean turbine power “FUN day christening Amazon's latest wind farm. #RenewableEnergy,” read the tweet, complete with a picture of its author – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – standing on top of a 300ft-tall wind turbine in the middle of Texas.

Moments after the photo was taken, Bezos produced a bottle of Moet and, with one swing, declared a wind farm open by smashing it over the top of the turbine head.

It was an odd way to announce your windfarm as operational, but that's Jeff Bezos – he does things his own way.

Located in Scurry County, Amazon Wind Farm Texas will deliver more than a million megawatt hours (MWh) a year into the local grid via 100 turbines towering over the landscape.

The Scurry project is now number 18 for Amazon – a surprising statistic to many experts who, until recently, had no clue Bezos was even involved in clean energy.

It may be even more of a surprise to learn that Amazon has 35 more wind farms

in the pipeline.

Many of the wind farms are being constructed and operated by Lincoln Clean Energy – a company Bezos has invested in.

Long-term goal: “To power our global infrastructure using 100 per cent renewable energy” “Investing in renewable energy is a win-win-win – it's right for our customers, our communities, our business and our planet,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon's global head of sustainability. “These are important steps toward reaching our long-term goal to power our global infrastructure using 100 per cent renewable energy.”

Bezos is a man who likes to get a

reaction, and he's also a man who reacts.

It's an interesting trait, and certainly one befitting a world-famous entrepreneur.

His recent image-change – from geek-dad chic to body-building fashion lover – wasn't an accident. He likes to give his audience a reason to gasp, hence his presence atop a 300ft tall wind turbine, clutching a fine bottle of bubbles.

The whole wind farm project has been a reaction in itself – a response to critics (a group which Bezos always seems keen to shock).

OVERUSE OF PACKAGING Years ago, Amazon was slated for its overuse of packaging. Small items would often be dispatched from the vast warehouses in several layers of material before being enclosed in a box many times the item's size. A raft of TV documentaries highlighted the issue, landing a weighty wave of criticism right at Jeff Bezos' door.

His response was as swift as it was effective. He launched the “FrustrationFree Packaging Program”, eliminating

Don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows — clean energy is win-win 98

jibes on Amazon footprint

some 60,000 tonnes of excess packaging from its US operations.

It was impressive – and that's what Bezos is all about. He's out to impress anyone who's watching.

Environmental group Greenpeace was like a dog with a bone when it came to analysing Amazon's environmental footprint.

The organisation dedicated itself to highlighting the impact Amazon was having, in particular the amount of electricity the company uses.

This wind farm project was largely a response to that. Jeff Bezos' turbine stunt was nothing short of a rude hand gesture in Greenpeace's direction.

DOGGEDNESS Given the fact that the whole episode might conclude with all of Amazon's facilities being powered by renewable energy, it's not clear (or perhaps even important) whether it's been driven by Greenpeace's doggedness or Bezos' outthere rejoinder.

Earlier this year, Amazon appointed Dara O'Rourke to its sustainability team. O'Rourke, a 49-year-old expert on worldwide supply chains, was also joined

by Christina Page – the former head of

“We really don’t know what they’re doing – Amazon is a very quiet company” ­— Sustainability consultant Yahoo!'s sustainability unit.

The team is led by Kara Hurst, who was the CEO of The Sustainability Consortium.

The team also has at its disposal Christine Bader, author of The Evolution Of A Corporate Idealist.

On paper, it's an impressive team that should deliver on Bezos' desire to prove naysayers like Greenpeace wrong.

The trouble is, because of the way Bezos likes to operate, the public probably won't know how effective this drive has been until after it's been done.

That's how sustainability consultant Andrew Winston views things. “They've hired great people,” he agrees.

“But we really don't know what they're doing – Amazon is a very quiet company.”

Amazon is indeed a quiet and closed company. Bezos, however, is not a

recluse. And his intense desire to prove critics wrong – often seen as a flaw in his character – is sometimes the best weapon in Amazon's armoury in terms of getting things done.

What is obvious about this sustainability team, though, is that each individual has been handpicked in order to address specific criticisms; for instance, Greenpeace's great objection to Amazon was its lack of transparency.

Dara O'Rourke's career has been largely focused on increasing transparency across many global organisations.

‘EXPLOITATIVE' Two decades ago, he brought international focus on working practices in developing countries like China, Vietnam and Indonesia, where factories supplying Nike were operating what he described as “exploitative and hazardous working conditions” in sweatshops.

In terms of sustainability, Amazon has deliberately stayed away from open conversation about corporate responsibility.

Call it ego, call it a character flaw or a personality disorder, the way Jeff Bezos responds to criticism does seem to be an effective force for good.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Bubbly on the breeze: Bezos christens a wind turbine

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Sangu Delle Relentless money-spinner

10

PEOPLE

100

SANGU Delle's career as a relentless money-spinner began in the school playground. Instead of a pop-up tuck shop or CDs sold from a school bag, Delle sold home-made revision guides to grateful classmates who were willing to pay for a leg-up in Ghana's tough education system.

Fancying himself as a bit of an opportunist, he used the excess funds to buy some discounted clothes that he could sell-on at a profit. The simple plan quickly became his first major business lesson.

“All the clothes I bought turned out to be fake and I lost all my savings,” he recalls. “It was my first exposure to arbitrage, but I never forgot the lesson from it – be careful what you invest in.”

At Harvard, he fostered the idea that a capitalist attitude towards business and finance could be used not just to turn a profit, but also transform the lives of people – particularly in his native Africa.

From this context, Golden Palm Investments was born. The company, of which he remains CEO, was devoted to improving, sustaining and monetising agriculture, healthcare, property, technology, and financial services. The results have been inspiring.

Golden Palm Investments has funded a string of hospitals in Ghana and, through investments in drug monitoring systems like mPharma, has been able to revolutionise the way in which medicines are prescribed in the country.

This caring spirit, according to Delle, was instilled into him by his parents who, during his childhood, risked their lives to shelter refugees from nearby Liberia and Sierra Leone which were gripped by civil war – an act he says he will never forget.

“I believe I have a moral responsibility as a privileged African to give back,” he says.

FDI recovery on track if policy Foreign Direct Investment is still in the doldrums, but there’s hope for a modest recovery in coming years – if political developments don’t throw a spanner in the works. JAMES ZHAN looks at the latest investment trends IN AN ENVIRONMENT of lacklustre economic growth and persistently weak trade flows, it was a slim hope that foreign direct investment (FDI) would diverge from the path now so familiarly trodden.

The year before last, FDI flows surged by 36 percent — the first robust growth in seven years. Yet that positive figure masked the sobering reality that most of the growth was attributable to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) or corporate inversions to gain better tax treatment. Neither activity is associated with broadening productive capacity or creating employment.

So 2016's two percent drop in FDI, to an estimated $1.75 trillion, hardly came as a surprise. What added gloom, however, was the divergent trend between regions.

Developed countries saw flows swell (up

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five percent to $1 trillion), with declines in Europe offset by a rise in flows to North America and other developed countries.

Transition economies enjoyed a surge of investment into transition economies (81 percent to $58 billion), which helped compensate for the net outflows over the previous two years.

However, developing countries suffered the bulk of the decline in FDI flows (down 14 percent, to $646 billion — a level last seen in 2010). Flows to Asia shrunk by 15 percent, although this followed a record rise in flows the previous year.

Latin America, whose flows reduced by 14 percent, saw the decline in FDI to its shores accelerating on the back of weak commodity prices and currency volatility.

Flows to Africa were largely stable (down

percent to $59 billion). On the positive side, the value of announced greenfield projects in developing countries rose by 12 percent to $516 billion. This rise was attributable to a few mega-projects spread over a handful of countries, while most other countries saw a decline in the area.

FDI outflows also declined from all major regions. Flows from developed economies (down 11 percent to $1 trillion) still comprised some 70 percent of total outflows. Flows from developing economies were flat (at $383 billion). Investment by European MNEs, which had surged in 2015, fell by 23 percent to $515 billion, led by sharp reductions in flows from Ireland, Switzerland and Germany. Investment by North American MNEs was roughly steady in 2016, despite a significant reduction

FDI inflows: global and by group of economies, ‘05–’16 and projections, ‘17–’18 (Billions of dollars)

continuity prevails

Executives’ expectations for global FDI activity, 2017–2019 (Per cent of executives based in each region and sector) stock markets should boost business confidence, which would whet investors' appetite to invest again. Add to this fiscal stimulus in the US, which should boost growth in developed countries while stronger commodity prices should underpin a recovery in developing countries. This strengthened economic activity will prop up global trade, which, in turn, should embolden investment activity and global

flows can be expected to increase by about 10 percent this year. (See figure left) A business survey conducted by UNCTAD earlier this year echoes this renewed optimism. Most executives polled – especially those in developed economies – are confident that the economic upturn will strengthen, prompting increased investment in the coming years (see figure below). A significant change in

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

in the value of their cross-border M&A purchases. The United States remained the world's largest investor at $299 billion.

PROSPECTS The tide is expected to turn, however, and UNCTAD sees a moderate recovery in investment flows in 2017 and 2018, even as they are seen to remain well off the pre-crisis peak. Stronger global demand, improved corporate profits and upbeat

Distribution of the SOE-MNEs of the world by major home economies, 2015

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sentiment from last year is evident among corporations active in the primary sector.

Having endured a hard downturn in the past two years, natural-resource-based MNEs seem to have turned the corner, and most executives now expect increased investment over the next two years. IT and professional services are seen as the most promising sectors to attract investment this year, according to polls by UNCTAD. Their developing-country peers picked agribusiness and the information and communication sector, which includes telecoms, data processing and software programming.

Nevertheless, uncertainty about the shape of future economic policy developments could affect the scale of a recovery. Monetary policy developments in the United States could result in a significant shift in the composition of capital flows, especially for developing economies.

Near-term policy uncertainty, especially in developed economies, may also dampen investment. Political developments such as the impending Brexit, uncertainty about the future of existing trade agreements involving the United States, as well as recent and upcoming elections in Europe have all heightened uncertainty.

In this year's World Investment Report, information contained in UNCTAD's new data base on State-owned multinational enterprises (SOE-MNEs) was released, which shows cross-border investors held by States punching way above their weight in the world economy.

SOE-MNEs are defined here as separate legal entities established or acquired by governments to engage in commercial activities, including FDI operations, by way of having affiliates abroad or engaging in non-equity modes. An additional criterion was that a government entity should either own at least 10 percent of the capital, be the largest shareholder or benefit from a “golden share” – the type of share that gives special voting rights and the ability to block key strategic decisions, especially takeovers by other shareholders In 2015, some 1,500 SOE-MNEs were identified, with more than 86,000 foreign affiliates operating worldwide. These SOE-MNEs represent a mere 1.5 percent of the total universe of MNEs but they own almost 10 percent of all affiliates. And 15 of the global top 100 non-financial MNEs, and 41 of the top 100 from developing and transition economies, are State-owned.

Distribution of the State-owned MNEs by major sector/industry, 2015 These State-owned MNEs are widely dispersed geographically: more than half are headquartered in developing economies, while the EU is home to almost a third of them. China is home to the most SOE-MNEs (18 percent), where they are instrumental in the country's outward FDI expansion strategy. China is followed

by Malaysia (five percent), India (four percent), South Africa (four percent) and the Russian Federation (three percent).

These SOE-MNEs are typically large and play major roles in key economic activities in their home countries.

Sectorally, SOE-MNEs are heavily weighted towards natural resources and financial services, which is largely explained by the nationalization of distressed assets during the 2008 crisis. Measured by the main economic activity of corporate headquarters, over half of SOE-MNEs are concentrated in five industries: finance, insurance and real estate; electric, gas and sanitary services; transportation; diversified holdings; and mining (see figure below).

The bulk of SOE-MNEs, however – more than 1,000 firms, or close to 70 percent of the total – operate in the services sector (although the inclusion of holdings may cause this to be overestimated). Some 330 SOE-MNEs (23 percent) are in

manufacturing, and 110 (eight percent) in the primary sector.

SOE-MNEs are far more inclined to engage in greenfield projects than private MNEs. Over the period 2010–2016, the total value of their announced projects reached $514 billion, well over nine percent of the world total. This share is more than six times higher than the share of State-owned firms among MNEs. The value of these announcements fluctuated between 2010 and 2014 but increased significantly in 2015 and 2016 with the value reaching $91 billion last year, or 11 percent of the world total, up from eight percent in 2010. These projects created more than 100,000 jobs per year, with a record of 120,000 last year. In other words, the projects announced by SOEMNEs tended to be particularly big and important for host countries. These projects targeted a wide range of countries: last year alone, more than 500 projects were announced in 64 developing, 28 developed and nine transition economies. * James Zhan is Director of Investment and Enterprise at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

Amol Yadav High-flying entrepreneur has his wings clipped

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AN INDIAN pilot's bid to build and fly an aircraft that he built on the rooftop of his five-storey Mumbai apartment block has found that red tape is heavy enough to prevent a dream becoming airborne.

Amol Yadav waited for almost six years for official approvals, but even with the Prime Minister's Office on his side bureaucracy could not be moved.

The frustrated flier now hopes the US may be able to help him with the project.

Yadav, a pilot with a private airline, built the six-seater aircraft with the backing of the Maharashtra government. Officials even proposed funding and workspace for him to continue his project. It was hoped that his simple design could be turned into a plan for a locally built 19-seater plane.

Yadav is now on the verge of completing a prototype, but he is still behind the 8-ball; his six-seater plane hasn't been cleared for take-off, which means the schedule for the 19-seater aircraft has been blocked.

The Maharashtra government's offer of land still stands – but first officials need to see the six-seater plane in action. And again, red tape prevents that from happening: the government will not pronounce it airworthy. Catch 22.

Now, Yadav has pretty much given up on his homeland and is approaching the US Federal Aviation Authority to register his aircraft in America.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

PEOPLE

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Rolls-Royce: still flying high ROLLS-ROYCE, long established as the maker of luxury automobiles, is now primarily recognised as one of the world's largest and most successful manufacturers of aero-engines.

The company's engines power more than 35 types of commercial aircraft, with a total of more than 13,000 engines in service around the world. Rolls-Royce is also the world's second-largest purveyor of military aero-engines, serving in excess of 160 clients in 103 countries with an operational engine base of around 16,000.

Though the wider public perhaps knows Rolls-Royce best for its automobiles – exquisitely crafted understatements of quintessential British class – the company no longer manufactures cars. It has evolved into an engineering company that constantly pushes the technological envelope to design and build more powerful and efficient engines that use less fuel and boast a reduced carbon footprint.

Rolls-Royce has been in the aeroengine business since 1914, and around half of all aircraft engines used by the Allied powers during World War I were produced at Rolls-Royce factories.

It was the Merlin aero-engine, first flown in 1935, that established

Deftly keeping a leading edge with advanced design the company's reputation as both an innovator and a supplier of superior power plants. A liquid-cooled V-12 engine with a displacement of 27 litres, the Merlin produced 1,580 horsepower. The engine was used in fighter planes, such as Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires, and in Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, among others. Rolls-Royce produced close to 150,000 Merlin aero-engines.

MOST POPULAR Today, the company's flagship aeroengine is the Trent XWB gas turbine, an exceptionally efficient design that uses Rolls-Royce's proprietary UltraFan technology.

Airbus has chosen the Trent XWB as the standard power plant for its A-350 extra-wide-body, twin-engine jetliner, which was first put into service in 2016 by Qata108r Airways.

The A-350 is quickly replacing the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as the world's

The Trent XWB gas turbine seen here on its test bed 106

most popular long-distance commercial airplane.

By last May, Airbus had received 802 firm orders for the A-350, securing Rolls-Royce years of work and driving the expansion of the production line at its Derby factory, creating 350 jobs.

The company has already received £30bn in orders for Trent WXB aeroengines. Airlines are eager to take RollsRoyce-powered A-350s into service on their long-haul routes for the added range the plane affords, and for the significant improvements in fuel economy.

Two-thirds of the £1.1bn RollsRoyce invests annually in research and development is now aimed at further improving the environmental performance of its products. The company conducts research and manages technology programmes and initiatives on behalf of governments around the world.

In order to trace its vectors of technological progress, Rolls-Royce developed a unique three-tier approach.

The company constantly updates its considerable inventory of currently employed off-the-shelf technologies that can easily be incorporated into its products.

Photo copyright Rolls-Royce plc

with elements of sci-fi

The second layer of the Vision Programme comprises new technologies that are undergoing validation and may come to fruition within the next decade.

When working on the design of future engines, Rolls-Royce engineers source their ideas from this tier.

The third tier is composed of sci-fi elements; technologies – often mere ideas – that are nowhere near release but hold great promise. Vision 20 explores the concepts that will power future generations.

As such, this tier entails strategic research of emerging, though not yet proven, technologies that only may become mainstream in 20 years or so.

Rolls-Royce maintains close ties with a number of premier universities and research centres to explore and investigate concepts formulated under its Vision 20.

The Vision Programme was set up to give the company's research and development effort direction and to ensure that Rolls-Royce maintains its position at the forefront of aero-engine industry.

With a carefully balanced mix of investments, risk-taking, and innovation, Rolls-Royce has deftly managed to keep – and expand – its leading edge. Now widely regarded as standing at the pinnacle of British engineering, and employing over 23,000 people in Great Britain, Rolls-Royce remains a hallmark of quality.

An example of Rolls-Royce innovation is the development of wide-chord hollow fan blades which save weight – and thus improve engine performance while reducing fuel consumption – but require space-age manufacturing techniques.

HOLLOW FAN Rolls-Royce's light-weight hollow fan blades also allow for savings to be obtained in ancillary gear such in the fan disc, structure, and containment parts.

The company has also introduced turbine fans with blades made of composite materials which enable fans to become larger and, thus, turn at slower rates for the same air displacement volume. This trend, coupled to RollsRoyce's open rotor technology, represent

Photo copyright Rolls-Royce plc

a significant improvement in engine efficiency that reduces fuel burn rates by up to 30%.

Rolls-Royce has established seven Advanced Manufacturing Research Centres – five of them located in Great Britain – which help the company and its industrial partners adapt its processes to the requirements imposed by new technologies.

The facilities produce solutions for advanced machining, material forging and forming, net shape manufacturing, and a host of other proprietary manufacturing techniques that allow the company to seamlessly turn its research findings into real-life applications.

While Great Britain's departure from the European Union does have the company concerned, the uptick in European defence spending, the continued buoyancy of the commercial aviation industry, and – perhaps most important of all – the formidable reputation it enjoys, should off-set any bureaucratic and financial headwinds.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

Cold weather testing: standard procedure for all Rolls-Royce aircraft engines

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Jacob Dewitte Hoping mini nuke gets good reaction

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PEOPLE JACOB Dewitte is a man unafraid of urging nations to embrace nuclear technology.

And as economies the world over begin to look for cheaper and more sustainable power generation methods, people may even start to listen.

We should expect to hear more from Jacob Dewitte as his personal agenda of embracing a better appreciation of nuclear power begins to snowball.

When world leaders gathered in Paris two years ago at the COP21 conference to debate the impact of global warming, it became abundantly clear that more needed to be done to curb reliance on fossil fuels. The solution must be found in economic alternatives to the coal-fired power stations which are still plentiful in the developing world.

Step forward Dewitte, founder and CEO of Oklo, and the development of what, one day, might become mini-nuclear reactors for the home.

Dewitte has assembled a team of scientists who are building a tiny, single use, solidstate nuclear power plant capable of generating and sustaining two megawatts of energy for more than a decade. It has the potential to save households around 90 percent on their current bills.

Oklo's prevailing designs are also “fuel agnostic”, meaning the small reactors convert energy from uranium, thorium or – the preferred case – recycled nuclear waste. The world has enough stockpiles of nuclear detritus to deliver several centuries of energy.

Dewitte's focus came about after talking to small companies based in remote areas of the US and Canada – places where diesel-guzzling generators are often viewed as the most energy- and cost-effective power sources.

Regulatory hurdles aside, Oklo (named after the planet's only natural nuclear fission reaction, discovered in the Central African state of Gabon) is edging closer to a production model.

Within 25 years, according to Dewitte, it is quite feasible that modern homes could have a miniature nuclear reactor squirreled away under the sink.

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Bailey shrugs off Burberry

out the task in hand with a typical black and white, no-nonsense approach.

Within three years, and riding on a wave of Britpop, Bailey thrust Burberry back into the international spotlight as its trademark check linings were seen on the most prestigious catwalks in the world.

In 2014, when Angela Ahrendts – another of Burberry's great visionaries – left to take her place around the Apple boardroom table, Bailey was promoted from chief creative designer to chief executive, a

position he held until July 2017.

Despite eminent success and a wealth of plaudits from his peers, Bailey's boardroom style often raised eyebrows. He was awarded a one-off share bonus worth more than £14m in his first year as chief executive – a move which led to many investors voting against Burberry's remuneration report.

Early last year, Bailey said he would scale-down his joint CEO and Chief Creative position by splitting his responsibilities with former Celine boss Marco Gobbetti. However, he chose to add the role of president to his duties with an undiminished salary, and an annual clothing allowance of £440,000.

“It has been a truly inspiring place to work and the decision to leave was not an easy one,” Bailey said.

Marco Gobbetti said: “While I am sad not to have the opportunity to partner with him for longer, the legacy he leaves and the exceptional talent we have at Burberry give me enormous confidence in our future.”

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

LEADING fashion house Burberry has announced that its top designer, Christopher Bailey, is to leave the company next year.

The 46-year-old, pictured right, is credited with being the brains behind the vision which propelled Burberry from a struggling middleweight London clothing manufacturer to a brand recognised across the globe for its distinctive style.

Bailey will leave the company as creative designer on March 31, 2018, as well as standing down from the board.

When he joined as design director two decades ago, Bailey was faced with the task of attempting to revive the fortunes of a luxury brand that had, in his own words, “seen better days”. Burberry had gone from being a stylish label gracing the fashionable hangouts of Knightsbridge to the uniform of choice for English football hooligans and ‘90s band Oasis.

It was an uphill struggle, but Bailey – a Yorkshireman known for his forthright opinions – laid

A chequered career... Oasis band-members and brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher popularised Burberry 109

Business Visioษณ

Awards 2017 Autumn announcement highlights

AN INVITATION TO VOTE Readers are cordially invited to vote in the Business Vision (BV) Awards Programme.

BV seeks out candidates with outstanding corporate achievements but all eventual winners will have convinced the judging panel that they have the vision to maintain and build on their success well into the future.

Visit our website www.bv.world/awards to place your vote or email us at award@bv.world We will send you a copy of the nomination form.

The information you provide will be used by the BV judging panel but not shared with third parties. As a small token of our thanks you will be entered in a free draw for a one-year complimentary subscription.

No vote is wasted. Your recommendation will receive our full attention.

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Budapest Bank – Best Banking Corporate Governance Hungary

BUDAPEST BANK is now celebrating thirty years of operations. In 1995, the bank was sold to GE capital but twenty years later returned to its former status of state bank in Hungary. The focus on corporate governance at Budapest Bank is exemplary and its management is working decisively and passionately in support of all stakeholders. The bank has a responsible and considered approach to risk management, compliance and all other critical matters. According to the BV judging panel, Budapest Bank is a highly ethical bank that delivers its values through a strong vision of what constitutes good governance policy. The panel feels the ethical approach has been and will continue to be a key driver to the growth of the bank and are pleased to confirm the award Best Banking Corporate Governance Hungary.

Holdun Family Office: Best Multi-Family Office Caribbean

Westlife Developments Ltd – Best QSR Leadership India

WESTLIFE DEVELOPMENT owns and operates a fast-growing chain of McDonald's restaurants across Western and Southern India.

Strong and inclusive leadership has been key in delivering Westlife Development's vision of becoming first choice for customers and a recognised leader in the QSR industry. All successful companies want to deliver innovation and by developing a cross-functional culture, Westlife has been able to respond effectively to a rapidly changing market. Our winner has been driving down costs whilst improving the supply chain, improving the customer offering, adopting new technology and reducing the cost of delivering new outlets. We are pleased to see Westlife Developments Ltd win the Business Vision Award for Best QSR Leadership India.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

ALTHOUGH many companies choose to describe themselves as such, it is our firm belief that to rightfully claim to be a multi-family office, the founding family should be one of the clients. For a multi-family office to work effectively, it requires much more than simply implementing the correct regulatory and investment strategies. To perform the role successfully, it needs to establish a common vision and set of values which are shared by all its clients. Holdun Family Office has managed to achieve this since its creation, and, in addition to maintaining the highest professional standards, the firm understands each family´s goals and vision for the future. For these reasons, BV is delighted to name Holdun as the deserved winner of the award for Best Multi-Family Office Caribbean.

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Generali Fund Management Hungary – Best Private Wealth Management Services | Hungary THE COMPANY has been involved in the domestic and international markets since 1992, initially in support of the insurance business but, nine years later, began offering services to third parties. Theirs is a client-centric approach that recognises asset management as a longer-term activity in which safety, an intelligent profit strategy, innovation and speed of reaction are of paramount importance. The Generali vision also includes a commitment to providing digital services to help clients review their portfolios easily and whenever they wish. Attention to such matters has resulted in very strong performance and an enviable level of client satisfaction. The BV judging panel happily confirms the award Best Private Wealth Management Services Hungary in the name of Generali Fund Management Hungary.

Standard Chartered Bank – Best Personal Banking Services | Tanzania STANDARD CHARTERED was the first international bank to set up in Tanzania after independence. This BV award winner provides the usual array of sophisticated personal banking services and does so as part of a vision to serve all customers to the very highest industry standards. The bank is something of a products and services pioneer having been the first to bring ATM services to Tanzania and continues to maximise customer convenience via its dependable branch network and electronic service offerings.

The judging panel are pleased to confirm the award Best Personal Banking Services Tanzania to Standard Chartered for the year.

Core Real Estate Dubai – Best Corporate Property Management Team | UAE

WITH MORE commercial leasing listings and more transactions than any other agency of its type in the UAE, Core Savills' popularity is richly deserved. Known for a dedicated commitment to its clients, the company refuses to take any property under management unless the team is sure it has the potential for success, which is discovered through a free-of-charge initial auditing of every prospect.

This strategy has assured Core Savilis with not only a quality brand, but the ability to nurture many long-term business relationships by focusing on the needs and goals of each client – of which there are over 1000.

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BAI – Most Innovative SME Finance Solution | Angola

BAI was created in November,1996, and pays particular attention to efficiency and personalisation on market approach. In the nonbanking financial sector, the bank holds control of the New Insurance Company of Angola (NOSSA insurance) and has a stake in the private equity investment fund of Angola (FIPA). In the non-financial sector, BAI has control of the Angolan society of private higher Education (SAESP) and runs the BAI Foundation. Attentive service to the needs of the individuals is a key focus, offering innovative solutions to support small and medium enterprises, while being a reference for the largest business groups in the country. Bai has 144 points of service in Angola, and 11 business centres. The bank is also present in Portugal and Cape Verde, with business partnerships in São Tomé and Principe. The formation of a well referenced financial group, the diversification of the activity of the group, as well as its internationalisation, impressed the BV judging panel. BAI has been awarded Most Innovative SME Finance Solution - Angola

Standard Bank – Best Financial Risk Management Africa

Cisco – Best IoT Connection Platform | Global

AS IOT begins to take over cities, transportation, and technology itself, Cisco has been at the forefront since its stages of conception.

However, after a survey found that 40% of IoT deployments passed pilot stage, but only 26% of them were considered successful by business leaders, the company decided it to take action. Earlier this year, Cisco launched the Cisco IoT Operaions Platform in to make deployments easier, and partnered with Microsoft Azure to better connect edge devices. Comprised of 3 components: Connection Management at Scale, Fog Computing, and Data Delivery, the platform provides the necessary tools to jump from prototype to production.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

STANDARD BANK GROUP is the largest African banking group by assets offering a full range of banking and related financial services. Their vision is to be the leading financial services organisation in, for and across Africa, delivering exceptional client experiences and superior value. This sets the primary goals and standard of excellence they intend to achieve in the medium term. With a heritage of over 150 years, they have an on-the-ground presence in 20 countries in sub‑Saharan Africa; fit-for-purpose representation outside Africa.In line with the realities of risk, regulation, technology and competition that characterise our operating context, they continue to invest significantly in their diversified operations, our people and culture, systems and infrastructure, and our brand.

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LATAM Airlines Group – Outstanding Contribution to Air Transportation Services | Latin America

LATAM Airlines Group S.A. is the new name given to LAN Airlines S.A. as a result of its association with TAM S.A. LATAM Airlines Group S.A. now includes LAN Airlines and its affiliates in Peru, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador, and LAN Cargo and its affiliates, as well as TAM S.A. and its subsidiaries TAM Linhas Aereas S.A., including its business units TAM Transportes Aereos del Mercosur S.A., (TAM Airlines (Paraguay)) and Multiplus S.A. This association creates one of the largest airline groups in the world in terms of network connections, providing passenger transport services to about 136 destinations in 24 countries and cargo services to about 140 destinations in 29 countries, with a fleet of 328 aircraft. In total, LATAM Airlines Group S.A. has approximately 50,000 employees.

Hotel Du Cap-Eden-Roc Antibes – Best Luxury Hotel Experience | Europe

THE HOTEL du Cap-Eden-Roc is the prestigious Grande Dame of the Côte d'Azur, with a 140 year legacy of discreet hospitality, the hotel encapsulates the epitome in style and elegance of the French Riviera. Behind statuesque Alep pines, Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc is ensconced between nurtured gardens and Mediterranean coastline. There are many peaceful corners and cabanas by the sea, offering seclusion if desired. The 116 rooms and suites and two private villas are immersed in the surrounding beauty. The restaurants are famed for the finest quality produce conjured into simple exquisite cuisine; the Mediterranean at its best. A private pontoon gives direct access to the sea, and the infinity pool is refreshed with natural sea water; there are five tennis courts, high tech fitness centre and spa. This is an exclusive retreat where generations of families and friends reunite for the summer season year after year.

Toyota – Best Automotive Technology | Global

THE AUTOMOTIVE industry is in the midst of some the most disruptive forces it has seen for decades, and Toyota is making sure it does not get left behind the competition. The company has recently teamed up with MIT Media lab, as well as 5 other companies, to explore blockchain technology for the development of driverless cars. Using this technology, Toyota plans to enable businesses and consumers to securely share data in order to help set insurance rates. The firm is also financing a flying car project called “Skydrive” using drone technology, which could be in the air by next year.

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Rolls-Royce – Best Aeronautical Industry Technology Global

ROLLS-ROYCE has been a pioneer of aviation technology for more than 100 years, and is one of the world's largest producers of aero engines for large civil aircraft, defence aero engines, and corporate jets. The company invests more than £1.2 billion annually in R&D technology, resulting in various masterpieces of innovation, including its STOVL-capable aircraft and the Trent XWB – the most efficient aero engine ever created. Evolving from Trent's architecture, Rolls-Royce plans to disrupt jet engine technology with the Advance and UltraFan engines, due for release in 2020 and 2025, which will be greener and more efficient.

Holland America Line – Best Cruise Experience Global

Volaris – Best Low-cost Carrier | North America

THE MEXICAN low-lost airline Volaris is opening up new routes across North and Central America. Volaris learnt from the world's best low-cost carriers to create its own blend of superior service and economy – with safety at the head of its priorities. A Business Vision does not have to be original, it may be the commitment to implement best practice to maximum effect. Volaris provides an excellent case study in how – by focusing effectively on the basics – great success can follow. We are delighted to see Volaris win the Business Vision Award for Best Low-Cost Carrier North America 2017.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

HOLLAND AMERICA Cruises is an established cruise line offering genuine 5* luxury cruises. The fleet of Holland America Cruises, with its distinctive marine blue hulls and teak promenade decks, are true ocean-going vessels. Gracefully designed, with spacious public rooms adorned with fine art and antiques, any one of these traditional Holland America cruise ships will effortlessly delight.

Clients can experience a Holland America fly cruises from the UK, cruising in the summer months to Scandinavia and Russia, on a luxury European cruise to Athens or Canada and New England, including unique Alaska cruises. There are also options, including Med cruises, Baltic and Fjords cruises, Bermuda and many more during the summer and autumn months. Vacationers can enjoy a Holland America fly and cruise to the Caribbean, Mexico, Panama Canal, Hawaii, South America and South Africa. Holland America cruises also set sail on a 108 day grand world voyage to the far reaches of Antarctica, as you explore the 4 corners of the world.

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BNP Paribas – Best Integration of Services | Europe

BY ASPIRING to be the reference among European banks with a global reach, the preferred long-term partner to clients, and a contributor to responsible and sustainable global development. The bank has a positive impact on all stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders – and on society. The vision of maximum intergration has been a cornerstone of the bank's success and the continued quest to maximise integration.

Vodafone – Best Smart Stadium Technology – Smart Cities | Global

WITH ITS global presence, NB-IoT network capability at its disposal, and a history of sporting partnerships, it is no wonder Vodafone have begun a Smart Stadium initiative. The company is planning to install the system for a number of stadiums, including Turkey's Smart Stadium, and in Spain's Valencia Football Club. Vodafone is set to install its system for the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar.

Vodafone Smart Stadiums offer an end-to-end digital experience, with video walls, location-based services using Beacon technology, a solar powered smart bus shelter, a Meshh network allowing fans to access replays and game information, as well as Tetra and Mobile Asset Tracking.

Etisalat – Best Emerging Markets Telecom Provider | Global

BASED in the UAE, Etisalat Group is one of the most profitable telecom companies in the world, with a net profit of AED 8.4 billion in 2016. Operating in 17 countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, it is also one of the world's most successful telecom groups in emerging markets. The firm strives to be the first to deliver local market opportunities and to breed innovation wherever it goes.

Etisalat has notably managed to capture a significant market share in Egypt and Nigeria, where its innovative mobile broadband service changed market dynamics by providing affordable mobile internet access.

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KPMG – Best Workforce Development Tool | South Africa

KPMG is one of the “Big Four” auditors; a professional service firm focusing on financial auditing, tax, and advisory. KPMG's South African subsidiary recently launched a Learnership Incentive Tax Tooll (LITT), which provides additional tax deductions for registered learnerships. By doing this, the firm hopes to encourage greater employment by reducing the cost of hiring new employees, as well as boosting the country's skills development. LITT provides an easy and automated processing facility to generate the tax return form for users, whereby firms can claim between R20,000 and R60,000 per learner and more again when the learnership is completed.

Goodyear – Best Tyre Design | Smart City Awards

Sabic – Most Energy Efficient Infrastructure Solutions MENA

HEADQUARTED in Saudi Arabia, SABIC is a global leader in diversified chemicals and operates in over 50 countries with innovation hubs in the USA, Europe, Middle East, South East Asia and North East Asia. The company makes chemicals, commodity and high performance plastics, agri-nutrients and metals, while investing heavily in Technology and Innovation. The firm employs hundreds of scientists who strive to address sustainability issues within construction by created specialised smart materials. SABIC also has a team of technical experts who work with architects to select the right choice of materials to meet light, weight, impact strength, stiffness, flexibility requirements.

Business Vision Autumn 2017 Issue • www.bv.world

WITH 48 manufacturing facilities in 21 countries, Goodyear is one of the world's largest tyre companies. It has 2 Innovation Centres where it develops high-tech solutions to the rapidly changing Automotive industry – the latest of which being the concept Goodyear Eagle 360 Urban. The company is transforming the relationship between tyres, vehicles and their surroundings with this tyre by using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity and AI. The deep learning algorithms allow the tyre to use its bionic skin to improve braking, handling and efficiency while manoeuvring, as the V2X connectivity shares real-time information about driving conditions.

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Godrej – Best Real Estate Development Partner | India

The Godrej Group, established in 1897, has its roots in India's Independence and Swadeshi movements. Today, the company is involved in everything from space exploration to agriculture, audio visual systems to chemicals and construction, storage solutions and infotech. Each Godrej Properties development combines a 120–year legacy of excellence and trust with a commitment to cutting-edge design and technology. Godrej Properties is currently developing residential, commercial and township projects. The company enjoys the patronage of 1.1 billion consumers globally across consumer goods, real estate and appliances. With a revenue more than $4.1 billion, the Godrej Group's vision for 2020 is to be 10 times the size it was in 2010. Besides a focus on strong financial performance and innovative products, about 23 percent of the promoter holdings in the Godrej Group is held in trusts that invest in the environment, health and education. It also makes a real difference through its Good And Green strategy to create a more inclusive and greener India. At the heart of all of this is a focus on people, fostering an inspiring workplace. BV judges recognise and salute this initiative, and are pleased to announce the Godrej Group as winner of the Best Real Estate Development Partner - India award.

Dubai Duty Free – Best Travel Retail Experience ­ Middle East Dubai Duty Free (DDF) was founded in 1983 – and recorded first-year sales of $20m. Its stated aim was to become one of the biggest and best travel retail operators in the world, a goal that has been achieved with a sales turnover of $1.85 billion last year. But there were loftier aims at work as well: in October 2004, the Dubai Duty Free Foundation was launched. The charitable body raises funds for worthy causes, specifically those benefiting children. The Foundation has made donations to 39 local and 52 overseas charities, disaster relief programmes and education projects. It has taken part in adventurous quests such as the Great Asian Cycling Challenge in Vietnam and Cambodia, and continues to play an active role in helping families and children in need. With 6,000 employees at the Dubai and Al Maktoum International Airports, support for sporting events, green initiatives and a drive to combat waste and landfill use, DDF's responsible and compassionate use of its wealth has impressed the BV judges, and prompted them to make the Award for Best Travel Retail Experience – Middle East.

Business Vision Award Nominations WE AT BV spend long hours unearthing interesting story leads, links, references, trends and tales of industry innovation. We also rely heavily on readers and website visitors for nominations for our Awards Programme. Do you know an industry figure, company, visionary or dreamer deserving of a little limelight? Business Vision couldn't hope to feature all the nominations, and obviously not all nominations will lead to an award.

Nor will every organisation seek public recognition, so the nomination process will remain as discreet as ever. Your nominations will not be published on our pages, but your feedback will be used to help us in our never-ending quest to identify, and reward, those individuals, companies and corporations able to see a little further down the road. www.bv.world/awards/nominate/

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AIM FEATURES 2018