BBeyond Spring 2011Highlights

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BBEYOND BBEYOND MAGA ZINE : 2011/1

Artist Danful Yang explores BBeyond

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portfolio

I’m

a Paris-based programmer with an obsession for the insolite. Like all geeks, I’m imbued with an urge from within to pop the cover, see the cogs, spy the innards of the most mundane objects. For me, however, it goes one step further: I unravel the machinations of cities, the secrets discarded by ever-moving civilisations. Dissatisfied with riding the metro, face pressed against the glass, scanning the darkness, I forged my first timid steps into the murky tunnels, scrambled towers and monuments under the cover of darkness, in the quest of glimpsing a unique perspective.

I’ve spent the last five years exploring world cities inside out - from tunnel-running in the Paris & NYC metros, wading through abandoned and semi-flooded Soviet-era particle accelerators in Moscow, to scrambling up as many world-renowned monuments as possible - I’ve been seeking rarely-seen nooks of our cities and photographing the adventure.

My motivation is simple: I feel as a participant of society, it’s a duty, an obligation to discover and see as much as possible - and to peel back the veneer to see upon what it is built. My technique is even more simple: I place my camera, digital or film, and record the spot.

There’s no magic or trickery required; the locations, places seen and used by so many, have an inherent beauty from atypical angles - anyone could plonk down a camera in the same spot and take the same photo.

SIMON YORKSTON CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BBEYOND 2011/1

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Fattoria La Vialla the ultimate organic estate La Vialla, a family-owned and run estate, is one of the oldest, largest (3316 acres) and most welcoming organic farms in the world. The owners, the Lo Franco family, are passionate about biodynamic farming and the environment.

They have won countless well deserved awards, but our BBeyond award goes to them for being, quite simply, some of the nicest, most generously-spirited and genuine people we have ever met.

We reckon it must be the amazing food and wine that does it!...

Here are some of culinary delights available from the estate.

Fattoria La Vialla Via di Meliciano 26 - 52029 Castiglion Fibocchi Tuscany Italy tel: 0039-0575-477720

L’ASTEMIO GOURMET The Abstemious Gourmet This gift package contains the following specialties: • • • • • • • • • • •

1 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (250 ml) 1 bottle of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena I.G.P. (250 ml) 1 jar of Orange olives (190 g) 1 jar of Poverella (fresh raw tomato sauce, 280 g) 1 bag of Tubettini (500 g) 1 bag of Linguine (500 g) 1 jar of Pesto (180 g) 1 jar of La Vialla•style Red Pesto (180 g) 1 jar of Rosmarina (rosemary tomato sauce, 280 g) 1 jar of Wildflower honey (380 g) the “Librone” (the big book as we call it in an “off-hand way” here at La Vialla) Le Ricette di Giuliana: a 400 page book elegantly dressed in a hardback cover

Note: this gift box is dedicated to all our food loving friends who don’t drink: there are many “around” with a good palette who unfortunately (for them!) are abstemious.

The appetizing Orange Olives and the fresh raw tomato Poverella sauce pave the way for two delicious varieties of pasta (Linguine, Tubettini), “supported” by a triplet of highly refined sauces, La Vialla specialties (Pesto, Red Pesto and Rosmarina). Besides their own individual qualities, these sauces are highly adaptable and can be mixed together (for instance: Pesto with Red Pesto; Rosmarina with Red Pesto; Pesto with Poverella. Try various “pairings” to taste and you will surely be satisfied). This delicious grouping is worthily accompanied by the Balsamic Vinegar of Modena I.G.P., the Farm’s award-winning Extra Virgin Olive Oil (stone ground in the mill at the La Lignana farmhouse), and to finish off, the sweet flavour of the Wildflower Honey, made from the bees’ fragrant flowering “pastures” at the Farm.

Price £38.05 V.A.T incl.

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IL CESTO The Basket

This basket includes the following specialties: • 1 bottle of Casa Conforto Chianti Superiore 2008 D.O.C.G. (750 ml) • 1 bottle of Barriccato 2007 (750 ml) • 1 bottle of Spumante Le Chiassaie 2009 V.S.Q.P.R.D. (750 ml) • 1 bag of Viallini (biscuits with raisins and pine nuts, 500 g) • 1 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (250 ml) • 1 bag of Spaghetti (500 g) • 1 bag of Linguine (500 g) • 1 bag of Penne lisce (smooth penne, 500 g) • 1 jar of Bombolino Sauce (cherry tomato sauce, 280 g) • 1 jar of Pomarola Sauce (sauce with tomatoes and carrots, 280 g) • 1 jar of Pesto (180 g) • 1 jar of La Vialla•style Red Pesto (180 g) • 1 round hand•made and untreated wicker basket (44cm in diameter, 13cm in height) • the “Librone” (the big book as we call it in an “off-hand way” here at La Vialla) Le Ricette di Giuliana: a 400 page book elegantly dressed in a hardback cover Note: another gift basket, another appetizing assortment which begins beautifully with two significant red wines (Chianti Casa Conforto Superiore 2008 and Barriccato 2007) joined by an aristocratic white, La Vialla's Spumante 2009, nicely complemented by the Extra Virgin Olive Oil. There are four aromatic sauces, Pesto, Red Pesto, Bombolino Sauce, and Pomarola which open the kitchen doors and pave the way for the Spaghetti, Linguine and Penne lisce (fantastic and irresistible dressings with three of the most classic and popular shapes of pasta). And for dessert? …La Vialla's biscuits: the Viallini, crunchy and unique, with the lovely flavour of the pine nuts and the Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Price £62.00 V.A.T incl.

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LA SCATOLA DEL BUONGUSTAIO The Gourmet Box • 1 bottle of Casa Conforto Chianti Superiore 2008 D.O.C.G. (750 ml) • 1 bottle of Sangiovese 2009 I.G.T. (750 ml) • 1 bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (250 ml) • 1 bottle of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena I.G.P. (250 ml) • 1 jar of Orange olives (190 g) • 1 jar of Salsa Nera (chicken liver pâté, 190 g) • 1 bag of Spaghetti (500 g) • 1 bag of Fusilli (500 g) • 1 jar of Bombolino sauce (cherry tomato sauce, 280 g) • the “Librone” (the big book as we call it in an “off-hand way” here at La Vialla) Le Ricette di Giuliana: a 400 page book elegantly dressed in a hardback cover

Tuscan touch, almost impossible to find, associated with many traditional and somewhat "laborious" methods of preparation), two wines, the Chianti Casa Conforto Superiore 2008 (the most classic, the pioneer of the Farm's wines which takes pride in a number of prestigious awards: one of the last ones in September 2009 at the International "Decanter World Wine Awards 2009" in London) and the Sangiovese 2009 (the wine in its pureness from the "Tuscan vine" par excellence, among other awards, 83 points at the "Mundus Vini" Competition in 2008), the Balsamic Vinegar of Modena I.G.P. and La Vialla's Extra Virgin Olive Oil (best organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil of Italy 2009 at the "Ercole Olivario" Competition in Spoleto, "intensive fruitiness" category).

In addition to these there are two types of pasta, the most traditional and irreplaceable (Spaghetti and Fusilli), the Salsa Nera (a delicious Tuscan recipe recently "jarred" at La Vialla), a tasty sauce for crostini (the "black" ones), which are never missing from a typical Tuscan antipasto (the sauce is also worthy for use as a special type of ragout for a first course pasta dish), and one of the most appetizing and typical of the Farm, the Bombolino sauce.

Note: To get off to a great start, in the cardboard box containing protective wood wool, there are the aromatic Orange Olives (a very

Price £37.00 V.A.T incl.

This gift package contains the following specialties:

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B.B. Your involvement in every aspect of motorsport spans 3 decades. How and why did it all start?

D.R. Where did it all start? Well, I suppose all small boys’ dream is to go motor racing, to play with cars. I was brought up on a farm in Wales - a long way from any racing circuit, but even so car rallies are just as big a thing there as they are in Scandinavia and elsewhere. From the age of sixteen, even before I had my driving licence, I was driving cars around the farm, and then soon after my birthday I was racing cars in car rallies. I was studying to be an accountant, but the racing was far more interesting to me, so before I finished all my accountancy exams I ended up getting a professional contract driving for one of the factory teams, and from there on, as they say, it’s all history.

B.B. Did you finish the accountancy exams?

D.R. I finished the five years of accountancy – and did the five years of

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articles - but never took the last exam. My father always said, or thought, I would go back to it but I never did. It was a good experience, nevertheless, and helpful in running a business.

B.B. You won the World Rally Championship in 1981 with co-driver Ari Vatanen. Did you at the time consider this to be the pinnacle of your career or did you have a very clear vision of developing your motorsport business interests?

D.R. At the time, winning a world title was a very significant achievement yet I’d always felt that spending your life in a car going round and round in circles was not challenging enough. It was always my intention to do something else immediately after, so it wasn’t a surprise to anyone when, just after we’d won the title, I decided to stop and set up my own business. I was only thirty years old at the time, so it was a good time to do it.

I wouldn’t say I knew where I was going, I think we just had a very competitive instinct; I surrounded myself with very creative people, very demanding about everything we did, and we started doing consultancy work for the large sponsors.

Rothmans had been my sponsor while I was competing and I acted as a consultant for them in their sports car racing, their Formula One racing and various other interests. That led to setting up my own teams and the business just diversified over a period of years.

B.B. Is it fair to say that some people have a knack for parleying their interests into a successful business, while the majority just enjoy their interests as a hobby?

D.R. Most people keep their work separate from their private life: they get up in the morning, go to work, get a salary and enjoy their weekend and vacations, their social and sports activities. For me work and

Chairman of ProDrive and Aston Martin

interview

DAVID RICHARDS

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leisure merge completely - I can’t imagine trying to drive a distinction between working or having fun. Whether I’m in the office or attending some social function or at a racing meeting, I enjoy it all in the same degree - it’s all seamless for me.

B.B. You sound like the luckiest man alive.

D.R. I am very lucky, I appreciate that.

B.B. You created a new rally series in the Middle East very early on in your career.

Why and how the Middle East? It is not an obvious or easy part of the world to make a breakthrough unless you are indigenous to the area.

D.R. The Middle East has played a very pivotal part throughout my life and career.

After competing in rallies I was invited by Rothmans to organise rallies in the region.

They had been my sponsors originally with my own racing, and they wanted to do promotions in the Middle East in the seventies. They asked me to help organise events so I ended up doing exactly that – I organised the first car rally in the whole region, first in Kuwait, and from there in Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, through Oman, up to Jordan and other

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countries in that part of the world. I made an enormous number of friends and have great relationships with a lot of people there to this day, and I think that’s helped me in other areas in later life. I believe things go round in big circles, as has been proven of late with my involvement in Aston Martin.

B.B. Do you speak Arabic?

D.R. No, but I am quite good at picking up on languages, I get the gist of what somebody’s saying… I don’t understand them precisely but you get a feeling of what’s going on. Arabic is quite a challenging language but I do pick up bits and pieces.

B.B. How do you identify a rally driver with great potential? What, apart from driving skills, does it take to be a great rally driver as opposed to a good one? Is it a particular set of mind?

D.R. I think there are three main attributes for a great racing driver or a rally driver (they are the same in certain situations).

Obviously there is a certain amount of natural talent: you can’t do this unless you have natural balance, a natural gift, and that competitive spirit. Secondly, there’s an enormous work ethic required. In any form

of motor sport there is far more practising, and far more training, than actual racing.

So to get the right results you have to put an enormous amount of work in. And the third element is to get the team around you to work with you. People look at a racing driver on the track and think that it is a very lonely, one person existence - whether it’s a F1 driver or a world class rally driver.

But the reality is the only way they can be successful is if they have the entire team supporting them and working in the right direction with them.

You see the way Schumacker built the Ferrari team around him in Formula One and you see the same in Sebastien Loeb who is the current rally world champion. If the team builds around you and supports you wholeheartedly, it gives you another little edge over everyone else.

B.B. How do you personally identify great potential? Is it a gut feeling?

D.R. It’s quite difficult. There’s bit of science behind it, because clearly there’s a track record. Each day we look for new drivers to join our next year team: we look and we analyse who these drivers might be and where we might get them from. We’ve looked at the records of dozens of drivers

A good example of the above is the British driver Richard Burns, whom we took out of another team, brought him into our team and suddenly he just excelled and became world champion.

So you can’t always rely on the results as they appear in front of you - you have to look at the bigger picture. I actually think that intellect has got a lot to do with it as well. If you look at most of the top sportsmen, they are quite intelligent people, they know how to apply themselves, and I like to meet these people and talk with them. These days of course, promotional

Ideally drivers would be personable, or be prepared to work on it. But I’ve yet to meet the perfect driver!

B.B. What I find interesting about you as a businessman is that you identified and commercially exploited the concept of co-branding (Rothmans and Porsche, followed by other successful partnerships) before co-branding was the buzzword that it is now. Was this an intuitive or a carefully planned, strategic approach at the time?

D.R. I think it was just an obvious relationship. Motorsports are a good example of an activity that requires very significant investment - there’s no question that the wealthier the team, the more successful it is. Normally when teams [outside of motorsports] become successful they get wealthy; with motorsports you need the finance to get the team going faster - it’s just a fact of life.

A term commonly used in motorsports is ‘speed costs money, and how fast would you like to go?’ In the early days when I set up my teams, it was very clear to

For me work and leisure merge completely - I can’t imagine trying to daive a distinction between working or having fun.

Clearly that is a major part, but sometimes you find under-performing drivers who have not achieved their potential for different reasons: they might have been put in the wrong set of circumstances or perhaps they’re in the shadow of an older driver who’s more experienced and who’s got the team working with him…

Although they are team partners, these drivers are almost outside of the team and don’t get the results they should. If you can take these people out of the existing environment and put them into another where they are really happy, they can blossom and you get great results.

skills and the actual ability to communicate are critical factors for us in marketing and in our relationships with car manufacturers or sponsors.

interview

over the last five or ten years now: looking at their results, how they compare, how reliable they are...

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me that the only way we were going to be successful was to persuade partners to join us, to get investment into the team, to find good business relationships, long term relationships with people that would give us stability and are instrumental to success.

We approach those relationships from the sponsor’s point of view. We know sponsors are not necessarily interested in motor racing but in promoting their business, so we measure ourselves by what our partners’ have achieved through joining us rather than just by how many championships we’ve won. .

B.B. It sounds a lot like ‘ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country’ D.R That’s right, that’s a very good analysis!

B.B. Who are the most active sponsors in motorsport in general and of individual drivers in particular?

D.R. Historically motorsports has had a lot of investment from cigarette companies, but that stopped about six or seven years ago, when legislation regulating tobacco advertising changed. The void left by tobacco sponsorship is increasingly being filled energy drink brands such as Red Bull, computer

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and telecommunication companies, such as Vodafone in Formula One, or their competitors in other arenas. The industry itself has gone back a little to its roots: the car manufacturers and their technical partners - the oil partners and the petroleum partners – that had been previously priced out by the sponsors’ excesses are now coming back into the sport.

B.B. Is Prodrive going to place an entry again for the 2011 F1 World Championship?

Which rally, F1 or the WRC is more demanding in terms of driving skills?

D.R. We’ve had a close association with the world Formula One title now for many years.

We’ve also looked at putting our team in on a couple of occasions, but I’m firmly of the belief that the only way to do that is if you meet two fundamental criteria. The first one is that you need to be relatively competitive.

I’m not a great advocate of going in the back of the woods and sort of fighting our way up.

Now, no-one ever expects to go in winning the Grand Prix but there are ways of going into Formula One where we would expect to arrive at the middle of the group, in my view.

Secondly it’s got to be commercially viable.

There are so many people who go into Formula One with their eyes closed, they don’t realise what they’re letting themselves into, they don’t have the right financial resources or the ability to access them, and they’re inevitably going to remain at the back of the grid forever. And so if we could meet both of those criteria we would still consider it. I don’t believe the environment is right for that though, and given all the other things we’ve got going on at the moment it’s not my number one priority.

B.B. Which of the two rallies is more challenging: Formula One or the World Rally Championship?

D.R. The difference between a driver in Formula One and in the WRC is very pronounced - they are completely different skill sets. It would be like asking ‘who is the better runner, the one who can run the marathon or the one who can run the one hundred meters in nine and a half seconds, or whatever the time is these days’ . They are that different skill

interview

There are so many people who go into Formula One with their eyes closed, they don’t realise what they’re letting themselves into...

sets. It was interesting to watch this year Kimi Raikkonen who has moved from the Formula One to the WRC - while he’s very fast for short amounts of time (he’s obviously a very talented driver and a Formula One champion), he’s had lots of accidents and hasn’t had the results everyone expected of him. Conversely Sebastien Loeb, who is by far the best rally champion out there, has had a go at sports car racing and tested in a Formula One car, and while he would be very good at it, he still wouldn’t be able to get in amongst the top drivers. It’s very specialised, just as any athletic programme or anything else. Could the top football players be good rugby players, could the top rugby player be a good footballer?

The basic skills are probably common, just as they might be on a motorcycle. For instance Valentino Rossi has tried the WRC and is competent. But there’s competent and that last one or two percent that makes you superb, and that takes you many, many years of training. There’s a sort of truism

in sport as there is in many of walks of life: that you need ten thousand hours and ten years to be competent at a particular activity, and there aren’t any shortcuts.

B.B. Prodrive has been, in fact, and continues to be associated with some of the most powerful symbols of speed, excellence, wealth – Ferrari, Aston Martin, Le Mans, Formula 1… is there a more sober aspect of the business and what is your typical day – apart from driving some of the most desirable cars in the world?

D.R. I guess when most people look at ProDrive they just think of the fast cars; they think we all spend our lives at the race track enjoying ourselves and spraying champagne. But the reality is that we’re very a methodical organisation behind the scenes, and we wouldn’t have survived for twenty-five years in what is an extraordinarily competitive industry, with its fair share of failures, if we weren’t behaving in a very methodical, business-like way.

My day normally starts very early in the morning, about half-past five. I have an office at each of our houses, whether it’s here in London or out in the country, so I just wander into my study and have a quiet few hours on my own catching up on emails. I don’t normally go into the main office until about half-past nine.

The first hours of the morning are a good time to catch up, because once I’m in the office, it’s just non-stop telephone calls or meetings. The day ends, almost inevitably, going out to dinner with people or doing something that’s related to the company.

Behind the scenes the company’s diversified: we started off with motor racing, and I always regard that as our core, the roots that have created the culture of the business and a very competitive organisation that lends its hand to anything. We have an engineering department that’s working on future technologies and hybrid development projects - we have some very special technology in that area and are looking to move into the auto motoring industry in the next few years.

We work on special edition road cars for people, not necessarily all the types of famous road cars but specialist road cars that we apply our engineering skills to.

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We have joint ventures with Ford in Australia where we do production cars for Ford. We have a range of other, more mundane activities - a merchandising and licensing division which handles a lot of the race merchandising for teams like McLaren, Williams in Formula One, and Aston Martin ourselves.

Business never stands still: most racing teams stick to their core business and only that. I think that creates vulnerability because you inevitably have poor years and difficult times. We have diversified and have a range of different activities - every year, out of a dozen or so business streams that we have there will be two or three that are enormously successful and two or three that are not performing as they should do, and the rest will be about average, so it all balances out.

As a company, we are self-contained in that we try to create new opportunities for people who have outlived their racing potential. We re-locate these people to different projects in the company where they can use their skills sets in a different context. Out of the 14 people who started ProDrive with me, I believe 9 are still with us. Stability of relationships is one of the features of our company and something I believe in.

We do recruit an awful lot of people inside the company. There is a tendency in racing to poach people from other teams but my view of that is that it doesn’t create a strong culture in your own organisation - it just creates a group of nomads. We recruit a lot of apprentices from local schools and universities. The person who is going to lead the Mini world rally team next year is a young guy, who started with us as an apprentice, went away to college to do his HMD course, came back to us and our rally team originally, married, had three children, went back to university to do a mechanical engineering degree at the age of thirty-two, returned to the Aston Martin racing team, and now heads the Mini team as well.

B.B. The Mini is another powerful symbol, but vastly different from the Ferraris and Aston Martins in terms of perception. Quite apart from its technical capabilities, have you selected it for the World Rally Championship because it is a more fitting symbol for the new austerity age?

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D.R. Not at all. There are two fundamental reasons why we chose to work with Mini: the first reason is that technically the product suited the purpose ideally. The car that we are going to use is a completely new product - it’s not the Mini you see today, it’s the Mini Countryman which has just been launched. It is a four-wheel drive and has small turbo-charged engines. It’s a completely new car for Mini and quite a different Mini from the one we’ve grown to love over the last ten years. In addition to that, and equally important, is the fact that Mini, by anyone’s standard, is an iconic brand. In global terms it must be one of the most recognisable car brands anywhere, so finding commercial partners to work with us and developing that whole activity, while not easy, has been made easier because of

the brand recognition. I personally feel great affinity with it because you couldn’t think of two more iconic British car brands than Aston Martin and Mini.

For me it’s like a dream come true.

B.B. Tell us more about the plans to build a small city car under the Aston Martin brand?

D.R. It’s built at Aston Martin’s headquarters in Warwickshire as a result of discussions with our customers who tend to use their sports cars for weekends and holidays, rather than routinely or in Central London. With everyone being very aware of environmental issues these days, the idea was to meet demand from people who live in large capital cities and to create an

interview

B.B. What is Aston Martin’s most active market at the moment?

the UK. Of late about twenty-five percent are sold in the UK, twenty-five percent in America, twenty-five percent in Europe and the balance in the rest of the world.

The thing is that we haven’t had dealerships on a global basis until the last few years.

Now we’ve rolled out new dealerships from Chile, Santiago which is open this year, to Buenos Ares, San Paulo, and we’re expanding into China and the Far East, and even nearer home, where we never had a dealer before - Greece.

D.R. The interesting thing about Aston Martin is that historically it’s been a very British-centric brand. If you turn the clock back ten years, obviously the volumes of cars we sold then were a lot lower, but you’d find that maybe fifty percent were sold in

But remember that we produce a relatively small number of cars, about five thousand or thereabout, so it’s only a matter of a handful or cars in each of these countries.

Aston Martin is still an extraordinarily exclusive product. ■

everyday car with the same luxury attributes as the large sports cars we produce. The Cignet will be available from the beginning of next year, and in fact there’s been one on display in Harrods this week.

The car has a very efficient, small gasoline engine and will be priced at around the £30000 mark.

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Right: Dark Romance ring in 18ct white gold set with Purple Tourmaline and Sapphires Below Left: Diadem double-finger ring in platinum set with Tanzanite and Diamonds Below Right: Deadly Nightshade ring in 18ct white gold set with Amethyst and Diamonds

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estled next to a quiet courtyard, a stone’s throw away from Selfridges, a chic yet unassuming sign indicates the entrance to jeweller Alexander Davis’ first shop (previously owned by Stephen Webster). Alex is putting his own mark on the boutique in much the same way as he is on the jewellery Industry. Educated at Eton, where his first entrepreneurial venture took the form of cufflinks embossed with the school’s prestigious crest, and Imperial College London where his degree in bio-chemistry sparked the inspiration for his first collection, ‘Dendritic’, Alex has won critical acclaim for his molecular-structured designs and was awarded New Jewellery Designer of the Year 2010. Currently collaborating on an exclusive range with online jewellery boutique www.myflashtrash.com, Alex’s illustrious designs are fast gaining a following with the international elite.

AMBER ATHERTON

interviews...

Alexander Davis New Designer of the Year 2010

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You have a line of haute jewellery.

Is there a distinguishable feature about it?

When did you start designing jewellery?

I started designing jewellery at Eton. We had “Silverwork” classes, and I made a silver wedding ring, and then a pendant, and then took it from there.

What inspires you and your pieces?

I take inspiration from all kinds of things including science, architecture and nature.

I love working with complex 3D shapes and bold forms. Everything I do must be innovative. You may not be able to reinvent the wheel but you can definitely re-invent the ring!

Tell us about the DNA pendant

I wanted to make something totally unique. I had the idea for the DNA pendant whilst studying biochemistry at Imperial College London but waited until I had the technical know-how to do the piece justice.

Below Left: Dendritic molecule ring in 18ct white gold set with Diamonds Below Right: DNA Pendant in platinum set with Diamonds, Sapphires and Amethysts

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The concept is to take a blood sample from the prospective wearer and send it to the lab where their DNA is analysed and a unique stretch of their “junk” DNA is sequenced. This determines the order of the four different colours of gemstones in the pendant. Each pendant is 100% unique to its wearer.

I like to make bold statement pieces that are decadent and visually arresting. They are made without compromise and feature the best quality of gemstones and the finest level of craftsmanship.

Who would you most like to design a one off piece of jewellery for?

There’s a certain big wedding on the horizon that I would love to bling!! ;) Can you short list the people who, in your opinion, are the most stylish?

Alexa Chung Nathalie Massanet Tamara Mellon Alice Temperley What does a piece of bespoke jewellery and choice of gem/ colour say about a person, their sense of aesthetics and their personality?

It says they’re prepared to break away from the norm and think unconventionally. My customers often have a range of pieces to suit different looks and colourways. If their dress sense is forward-thinking then why shouldn’t their jewellery be? ■

Left: Dark Romance ring in 18ct white gold set with Aquamarine and Diamonds Below Left: Dendritic lattice ring in 18ct white gold set with diamonds Below Right: Dark Romance ring in 18ct white gold set with Ceylon Sapphire and Diamonds.

AMBER ATHERTON

interviews...

ALEXANDER DAVIS

Alexander Davis Jewellery 1A Duke Street W1U 3EB London T: +44(0)207 486 7788 E: info@ alexanderdavis jewellery.com W: www.alexanderdavis jewellery.com

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party party party!!!

CLAIRE JOHNSON

Rocks the Grosvenor House Ballroom!...

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“He never does things by half” said his statuesque

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daughter Libby at his birthday bash in Staffordshire just a few months ago.

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t the end of January, John Caudwell threw another Great Gatsby-style party , this time in London, to celebrate the birthday of the girl who clearly rocked his world 10 years ago, Claire Johnson.

Family and those privileged enough to be his friends were entertained to a full cabaret performance before and after dinner, with acts to please every taste, from the operatic to the pop rock in the shape of Mika.

Dancers in sequined and feathered masks greeted the 300 or so revelers as they filtered in from the reception to the dining area of the Grosvenor Hotel ballroom. John gave a speech about Claire, Claire gave a speech about him,

their son read a ditty, and every table produced one of their own – a ditty, that is…

Many took the easy rhyme route and focused on “Claire’s hair” (she does have quite a mane), some humorous, others earnest but mostly, just plain affectionate.

When dinner is over and the live music starts belting out, their kids dance barefoot alongside titled grandees and senior family members in wheelchairs.

The host and hostess make time for every single guest, so for that one night no one feels there is any hierarchy or even formality (other than the black tie attire). Caudwell’s parties are as unusual as they are memorable.

We live in times when networking has supplanted having good, old fashioned fun among friends. To some extent, Caudwell has gone back in time and reinvented the family and friends party on a larger than life scale.

The Caudwells are warm, genuine, generous and unaffected - there is a quality about them that brings to mind that well used “salt of the earth” English cliché, mixed with a hefty dose of glamour. Not that it would define them… anyone who has made that much of a success in their lifetime, has got to be very seriously smart in addition to all of the above.

Birmingham City University acknowledged that – and Caudwell’s philanthropic endeavours – when they bestowed a doctorate on him at a ceremony on the 27th January of this year.

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1. John Caudwell and Alexis Lewis 2. Claire Johnson talks to Tanya Brier 3. Claire-worship 4. Isabelle Purdew 5. Jon Caudwell with Saffron Aldridge and Ian Wac 6. Mika and Claire

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party party party!!!

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1. Claire Johnson talks Mike and Sonal Jatania 2. Gabriella AnstrutherGough-Calthorpe 3. Dorothy Lang 4. Pritpal & Ruby Singh Nagi 5. Rhiannon Caudwell and Beryl Caudwell 6. Ashley Wild Smith, Alexis Lewis and Karen Tudor Jackson 7. Paul and Hilary Lafferty 8. John Caudwell with guests 9. Entertainers for the evening 10. John and Claire’s son Jacobi 11. John Caudwell makes a speech 12 Claire Johnson rocks!

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The Gstaad Palace Polo Tournament takes place from 19th to 21nd August.

party party party!!!

It is not a hugely publicized event, but infinitely better attended than its more commercial counterparts.

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The 15th edition (2010) of the HUBLOT POLO GOLD CUP GSTAAD was marked by high performance and great summer weather.

The first match was close and provided an exciting finish. Bank Baring Brothers Sturdza won 10 to 9 against Hublot. Both teams played extremely well. The difference was clearly made by Marcos Heguy (hcp 10) who marked 8 goals including the winning goal. The interactive team play between Marcos Heguy and Gaston Lauhle (hcp 7) was excellent.

Team Hublot was led by the always superb coordination and interplay of the Mendendez brothers (hcp 7 and 6). The team was unlucky in that the winning goal was marked in the 30 seconds of the 5th chukka. Â The field, being in better condition for the teams of the first match, hampered Star Design and Palace Gstaad as they could not display as much speed as their predecessors.

The result of this match was even tighter than the first one: Palace Gstaad Team won against Star Design by 7.5 to 7. The match was clearly led by Alejandro Agote (hcp 8).

Together with Justo Saavedra (hcp 6) they made a perfect team, with Justo opening the game for Alejandro wherever possible.

Star Design seized several opportunities.

Newcomer Jack Richardson (hcp 3), 19 years old, was particularly impressive. Richardson was declared the best young player 2010 in Great Britain.

GSTAAD PALACE

Teams BANK BARING BROTHERS STURDZA SA (18): Juan Pablo Jauretche 1; Gaston Laulhe 7; Marcos Heguy 10; Stefani Marsaglia 0 HUBLOT (18): Gualtiero Giori; Franckie Menendez 7; Eduardo Menendez 6; Julio Coria 4 STAR DESIGN (18): Philipp Maeder 0; Federico Bachman 6l Milo Fernandez Araujo 8; Agustin Martinez 4 GSTAAD PALACE (17): Bert Poeckes 0; Justo Saavedra 6; Alejandro Agote 8; Jack Richardson 3

POLO TOURNAMENT

Left: Mr. Pierre E. Genecand, President Gstaad Polo Club, and Mr. Andrea Scherz, General Manager & Owner Gstaad Palace

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Finance Spotlight

Jon Moulton is a veteran of the private equity industry and the chairman of Better Capital. To his peers in the world of finance he needs no introduction.

Through this interview, our subscribers can benefit from his unique insight into economy and industry related topics.

B.B. How is Better Capital different from other private equity firms? How is it better than other companies that you’ve previously been associated with, both in what it does and how it does it?

J.M. It’s clearly better because of its name!

What it does is turnarounds – it only does turnarounds, so in that respect, it’s quite different from most private equity firms. We don’t buy companies typically at auctions and win by paying the most – we win deals by being very flexible, by moving very quickly and by taking aggressive action. The firm is set up in the form of a Quoted Limited Partnership which is a unique structure. It is the highest rated private equity company on earth at the moment in terms of its premium-to-net assets.

B.B. Your stated views about the economic future of this country have not changed since the elections last May and the outlook is still bleak, you say.

J.M. Probably. I fear things are looking a little grimmer today than they were last year. I think there is a great deal of uncertainty – we’ve got an economy awash with debt and we’re still running up a big deficit despite all the cuts that are being talked about but not yet implemented.

That’s the same for the rest of the developed Western world. Interest rates are at ludicrously low levels. If they were to rise we would see an amazing amount of recession-related problems again. It all seems very unstable to me. I think interest rates will break up at some point and when they do, it will hurt.

B.B. Even if the cuts are implemented, you don’t see any way out?

J.M. The cuts are not enough. As the government gets through all the cuts that it is talking about in the UK, we will still not start to see any quality of government income and spending until 2015, so that’s a long period of adding to an already massive deficit. And that’s on the assumption of steady growth, low interest rates and no international financial crises on the way through. That seems very unlikely to me, so I think the debt will continue to rise.

Which is actually something I feel quite strongly about: it’s wrong to be leaving debt for either our kids to pay or default on our creditors or inflate our debt away so that we don’t pay the same value that we took. I would welcome what would probably mean a much tighter and more difficult early period by actually taking through much bigger cuts now. The government might

JON MOULTON BETTER CAPITAL

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but we’ll still have women...

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take out £80 billion over the next five years in pieces, in terms of annual savings – to get the budget balance right at once you need to take about £150 billion out.

B.B. What type of turnaround companies do you consider? Is there a general criteria, such as the size of the company, or do you go for specific industries because you feel certain industries perform better in a recession? I am referring to an old saying, ‘publishing is recession-proof ’, in relation to your acquisition of Reader’s Digest.

J.M. Better Capital finds and invests in all kinds of industries. Now some industries are not very interesting, basically they are not turnaround industries -they’re just doomed, declining industries on the way out. But other than that we’d look at anything. So far the portfolio consists of two aeronautical engineers, a media company and Reader’s Digest, and as of a couple of weeks ago a group of IT service businesses, so quite a mixture already. I expect that mixture to continue to build.

Turnarounds that we’re after are ones where we can see a way to move from loss to profit with a few simple actions. Some deals look like that, some don’t. Some turnarounds require new products, new markets, new management, new pricing pages, new

distribution -we don’t do this, they’re too complicated. We do things that are simple, where we can cut something out, where we can introduce a simple action within our own control to turn it from loss to profit.

We dedicate our time to seeking out those opportunities.

B.B. We ask all our interviewees what they think of the future of publishing, specifically of print publishing versus digital publishing. What are your views on that, do you think that printed matter will survive, or does publishing needs to redefine itself as an intellectual property product ratherthan just say, a book?

J.M. I think it’s actually quite simple -the only thing nobody knows is how fast things will change. Clearly digital is slowly taking over from print- print will never vanish, at least not in my fairly limited remaining lifetime. Print is so convenient, print is durable, print is cheap - but digital has so much more functionality, it’s easier to store, cheaper to produce, it’s more ecological. So everything moves slowly away from the printed media and towards the digital. The pace I know not accurately, nor does anyone else. But I think that’s just an irresistible steady trend from here on forward.

B.B. So you think that the beautifully bound leather books will disappear from our bookshelves?

J.M. They won’t disappear, but I’m afraid they will be more used as ornaments. It’s a shame, I think- but we’ll still have women!

B.B. Better Capital invests in UK businesses only. Could you nevertheless speculate on the global markets versus the UK market. If power and money are shifting toward the East, is there one economy you would invest in over another?

J.M. We operate in the UK and Ireland.

Of course Ireland is very troubled so there’s lots and lots for us to look at there. Our last deal was basically Irish. Where would I really like to be investing? Well if it’s turnaround investing, the UK, America - places where change is easy and where employees aren’t dramatically protected, are the most attractive jurisdictions.

If you’re asking me the broader question where I’d like to invest, I think I’d like to invest in a market that has growth and long term potential with good demographics, which really describes about half of the so called emerging markets. I wouldn’t necessarily go for just one of them though, because they’re all a bit risky. However, a nice little mixed packet of the emerging

market nations, I’d like to invest in that.

B.B. A Wall Street legend quipped in private conversation with me that the so called emerging markets could be equally defined as SUBmerging markets.

How do you define emerging markets?

Would Eastern Europe be perceived as an emerging market, or a peaked or a distressed one?

J.M. I think Eastern Europe’s quite interesting because it’s got a mixture of distress and a bit of growth, because the new middle class is driving it forward through consumption. But really compared to India or China, East-European countries are not emerging markets -they are relatively mature, slower growing markets.

The definition can be interpreted however you like, I suppose - emerging markets are pretty much anywhere apart from the UK, as far as the Brits are concerned.

B.B. With everyone predicting a doubledip recession, do you see investors in private equity losing their appetite for risk in terms of lending for distressed companies that might be in trouble because of the recession?

J.M. Of course people will be frightened by a double-dip recession if it happens. Sitting

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Finance Spotlight

turn, they take nerves and estimation.

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And because they are risky, lots of people can’t do it.

here today it looks like an even shot that it will happen. If it does, then some investors will lose their nerve and quit the field; others will see the opportunity in buying things at historically very low values with the opportunity to finance them through the bottom of the recession.

B.B. Even if these companies are in trouble because of the recession?

J.M. Even if they are ...

Everything is a question of price and cash-flow. Take a really lousy industry in a recession, house building. If you are able to buy the company very cheaply and you are able to stand the current debt load on it, at some stage you will probably harvest an enormous amount of money from watching that company recover.

So there are opportunities in a down-turn, they take nerves and estimation. And because they are risky, lots of people can’t do it.

B.B. Do you believe London will hold its place as global financial centre, or has it already lost that status?

J.M. London IS a global centre and it’s pretty unlikely to lose its status as a global

centre. I think it will get proportionately less important as many of the other markets actually get more important.

Singapore, Hong Kong - these places clearly have an enormous scope to grow in the financial markets and they will. The UK is probably as good as it gets in terms of its market share - it’s very strong in lots of financial services, and it’s far more likely to go down than up. I fear that’s just the way of the world.

B.B. Finally, what is the single most significant change in society in your lifetime?

J.M. That’s a very difficult question. In the UK ... I think it’s simply the growth in wealth. I grew up in an industrial northern town, and it was poor. I had TB as a kid.

My dad had a car! That was the only car that was owned by any of the dads in my class. So I was middle class because we had a car, albeit a wreck of an old car.

I’d say the growth in wealth is the biggest change -standards of living have risen sharply and people don’t realise how lucky they truly are- they just moan about how bad it is now. ■

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