Portfolio | December 2016

ISSUE

132

MEET THE JETSONS

THE DOOMSDAY VAULT

How Nasa envisaged your future

Mankind’s insurance policy

WHAT GOES OFFSHORE

DAVID LAUREN

The secrets of wealth managers

Rise of the digital preppy

s illiam W a n Sere

Arnold Palmer

Crist iano Rona ldo

Crithe Arnold Palme r stian the , is one fof o orsports de ing found a father s n of the t m he m Ronaldo w s o e. rEven s ha brand n h is t od m a t o a m o t li posth umou sly e ahis a Wil dds mern-day s he poste ne sp cond rc up Seren number o bility is se i l l 5 Ern���������� dors�����������95ions to a erstar. H hild ����9powe world er marketa Endo�rseme ����nt � � � e � n � � m y � � bran is nt po er���� l appea and h loba ����������e����90 d. �90 G���������� ����������� owGloba � � l w � p � � t � l � e � n � a r������� ppea ������� eme � � s � � r � � B � � o � � l � � 5 u � � � d � ��������� sin���������� ��������� �7 ���������� ess �acum En ess a��������7�5 al ������Busin ���������en 95 ��������� cume ������� �� l appe � � � a � C � � � � b � � 0 o � � o � � 8 l � o � � n n � � Cool � G l � point � e s � � � ���������� � ���������� � � p � ���������� � � � m ��������8 � � � 0 oints ��������� 90 u ��� ��������� ��������� ���������� ess ac ������7 ���������� Busin � � � � � � � � � � � � � s � 5 ��������� point ��������� Cool ���80

THE MONEY MACHINES How sportsmen and women are making millions away from the field of play

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DECEMBER ISSUE 132

The business of life & living

Exclusive to Emirates First Class and Business Class

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Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact the editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, financial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken.

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DECEMBER ISSUE 132

CONTENTS UPFRONT

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OUT OF THIS WORLD

Looking back to a time when Nasa thought we would all be living in space

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LIVING

Charles Porter: the go-to man for footballers and celebrities

INTERVIEW

CONCIERGE TO THE STARS

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75

David Lauren would like to take you on a journey

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STYLE

DOOMSDAY VAULT

A large cupboard buried in a mountain may one day be humanity’s only hope

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MOST WANTED

The most desirable items to splurge your cash on

Men’s and women’s looks for the winter season

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OBJECT OF DESIRE

A piece of mechanical art for your wrist

84 GIN

The most innovative spirit out there

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SALVADOR DALÍ

A cookbook from the surrealist artist

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34,932 copies January - June 2016

DECEMBER ISSUE 132

CONTENTS FEATURES

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THE ART OF TATTOOING

The way society views tattooing has shifted in recent years. Once a sign of social exclusion, tattoos are today considered a legitimate form of body art

44

CIVILISATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Increasing numbers of super-rich people are buying up boltholes in remote areas, driven by decaying cities and fear of crime

50

SECRET WORLD OF WEALTH MANAGERS

They know more about their clients than the clients’ own wives. They are the brains behind the most ingenious tax avoidance schemes. And there are more of them than ever

58

SHOW ME THE MONEY

How athletes went from being well-paid young people who were good at running or playing with balls, into wealth-generating machines of which their on-field prowess is just a part

64

A TIMELY CHECK-UP

In 2014 Dubai unveiled a strategy to become a world-class destination for medical tourism.

How far has it come?

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CALIBER RM 037

UPFRONT

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DECEMBER / NASA

ISSUE 132

Space colonies of the ’70s A look back at how Nasa once looked forward.

Words: Matt Pomroy

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UPFRONT

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DECEMBER / NASA

I

n his 2015 State Of The Union address to Congress, US President Barack Obama said: “I want Americans to… push out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay.” But this isn’t a new thing. Back in the 1970s there were already plans for living in outer space.

In the ’70s Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill, Nasa’s Ames Research Center and Stanford University proposed that we could build gigantic spaceships, large enough to live in.

Nasa said: “These free-space settlements could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation,

ISSUE 132

fantastic views, freedom, elbowroom in spades, and great wealth.

In time, we may see millions of free-space settlements in our solar system alone. Building them, particularly the first one, is a monumental challenge.”

Nasa recently released some of the concept images for three different types of construction that they believed could host up to one million humans in their new habitat floating outside the confines of the earth. The three constructions were referred to as Toroidal Colonies, Bernal Spheres and Cylindrical Colonies. For the chosen few, Nasa believed that one day they will be our home away from home.

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UPFRONT

In the 1970s, Nasa believed we were on the brink of a mass migration, not to a planet, but to huge spaceships.

Here, and overleaf, are the recently released artists’ impressions of what they would be like. As you can see, “Great views and plenty of elbow-room”

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DECEMBER / NASA

ISSUE 132

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DECEMBER UPFRONT / CONCIERGE

ISSUE 132

TECHNOLOGY | GLOBAL

Need a phone? Car? Santa?

The discretion of the footballer’s concierge. Words: Rory Smith

C

harles Porter and his staff of eight work from his office in a converted riding school on the grounds of Aske Hall, an old manor house set in the gentle, rolling hills of North Yorkshire. His Australian labradoodles, Bertie and Cybil, spend their days lounging on a leather sofa by a roaring fire.

It is an unassuming setting for an unassuming company. Porter does not advertise, nor seek to publicise his work; he had never previously granted an interview.

His website is modern and sleek but studiously enigmatic. “There are no pictures of people we work with,” he said. “We live and die by our discretion.”

To hundreds of players in English soccer over the past 20 years, though, Porter is an integral part of life. “He has helped me out with all sorts of things,” said Kevin

Kilbane, formerly of Everton and Ireland’s national team.

Danny Mills, a longtime client and former England international, described Porter as a “consummate networker, a great person to have around to take the stress away”.

To Porter’s clients – actors and musicians, as well as athletes – he is almost indispensable. He will not say it, but he is the ultimate purveyor of the Premier League lifestyle.

It is Porter whom you call to get your hands on the latest cellphone, or when the time comes to upgrade your car.

It is Porter who can make sure your Christmas shopping is completed, or your vacation is booked. It is Porter who knows the people to hire if you want Santa to visit your children, and it is Porter, to at least one player, whose help you seek when you want to propose.

“One client rang me and said:

3,500

Number of clients Charles Porter has

‘Charles, I want to get engaged, and I want you to sort everything out,’” he said. “I said: ‘Have you at least found a partner?’ He said he had someone in mind, but that he needed everything else arranged: a ring, a venue, to fly in by helicopter.

“We’d never done anything like that before, but we pulled it off.

We sent them to a Scottish castle.

She said yes, and they’re still married. There was only one thing we couldn’t quite do: He said he wanted snow. I had to tell him that there are some people I can’t have conversations with.”

It takes Porter a little time to come up with a satisfactory, concise definition of what it is, exactly, that he does. “It is,” he said, mulling it over, “quite difficult to pin down. It can be a bit of a challenge when people ask.”

He can say easily enough what he is not: “We are not a concierge service,” he said. “We are

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DECEMBER ISSUE 132

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not the people you call to get a table at The Ivy, or at the Chiltern Firehouse.” He is not, as one of his clients found out, the man to call when you want a packet of cigarettes delivered to a bar by taxi at 3.30 in the morning.

Porter initially settled on calling himself a “jack of all trades”, but a little later, a more poetic turn of phrase occurred to him. “We are the people who fill the holes,” he said.

“We are the people who make life a little smoother.”

That his name is still so little known outside the rarefied circles in which he works goes some way to explaining his success in doing that.

He would doubtless be able to write a compelling, salacious memoir, but breaking the omertà of his trade would be anathema to him. He religiously eschews name-dropping.

That sort of tact, to the rich and famous, holds tremendous appeal.

Porter started out some 20 years ago, after his work with the phone network Cellnet brought him into contact with Middlesbrough, the Premier League club the company sponsored.

“I remember going to the training ground,” he said. “There were two guys hanging around in the car park.” They were known, to the players, as something not far off from Baloney Bob and Fairground Frank.

“One did cars, the other watches and jewellery,” Porter said. “I thought I could do it better than that.”

His initial sphere of expertise was, thanks to his background, cellphones.

“It was one of the first things the players wanted,” he said. “But the clubs did not have people helping them set those things up. In the early days, there was one Senegalese player who had a pay-and-go SIM card. He was spending about £7,000 a week phoning home.”

Porter used his contacts not just to give players access to up-to-date contract phones, but to help them with the paperwork, customer care, technical support and security.

There was, for a while, a fad for

UPFRONT / CONCIERGE

Kevin Kilbane, formerly of Everton and Ireland’s national team, is one of hundreds of football players to depend on Charles Porter.

‘He [Porter] has helped me out with all sorts of things,’ he says

personalised phone numbers, incorporating birthdays or jersey numbers. “Then they started asking for other things,” he said. He sourced cars, worked with private banks to set up accounts, and, later, added insurance, holidays and luxury shopping to his repertoire.

As his portfolio expanded, so did his client base. “I started out with 12 Premier League players,” Porter said. “Now we have about 3,500 people from sport, entertainment, everything. Most of them work in teams or casts, and they talk to each other. It is all word-of-mouth.”

Porter looks after the families of many of them, too. “One of the things I learned working inside a club was that you have to take care of the unit,” he said. “If a player is happy but his wife does not have a car or a phone, then that does not help.”

Today, most teams have dedicated player care departments, employing as many as a dozen people to ensure their charges’ lives run as easily as possible. They help them find properties to buy or, increasingly, rent; enrol their children in schools; make sure their bills are paid; and, in some cases, find churches or mosques where they can worship.

“The clubs have done all they can to take Bob and Frank out of

the equation,” Porter said. They maintain lists of trusted suppliers, from luxury brands to financial advisers. The department store Harvey Nichols is among the retailers that install pop-up shops at training grounds so players do not have to browse with the masses.

Porter, though, has not seen his work dry up. If anything, the opposite is true. He is now invited by clubs to educate young players about phone security; his clients are, increasingly, the teams themselves, rather than individuals.

“I will quite often get calls at night explaining that they are with such-and-such a player in a restaurant,” he said. “They will say they are signing tomorrow, and they need a phone for them as soon as the deal is done.”

Much of the day-to-day work, though, is sorting out bank accounts, credit ratings, car insurance, technical problems.

“I realised a long time ago that these people are not going to ring a call centre, give their names and spend 40 minutes on hold to sort out their data allowance,” Porter said. That is where he and his team come in: to take care of life’s little annoyances, to fill the holes, to make the journey as smooth as possible.

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DECEMBER / SVALBARD SEED

ISSUE 132

TECHNOLOGY | USA

The doomsday vault The Svalbard Seed Vault is humanity’s insurance policy, a means of insuring our future food supply against disaster. We explore how the world may one day come to depend on a large cupboard buried in a mountain. Words: Stuart Turton. Images: Global Crop Diversity Trust

A

nybody approaching The Svalbard Seed Vault might easily mistake it for a spaceship buried by ice. Halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, from the outside it’s just a single grey door built into the side of a mountain. What’s beyond that door might prove to be the most important building on the

planet one day, but for the moment it’s best thought of as a very large, very cold safety deposit box.

Unfortunately, to explain why it’s so important we’ll need to do a little crystal ball gazing.

Imagine a farmer waking up to find his crops aren’t growing.

He talks to his neighbours, and discovers they’re suffering the same problem. Up and down the

90%

Fruit and veg varieties lost in the US since the 1900s

country, fields produce nothing but dust. It’s a quiet cataclysm, virulent disease or climate change having rendered every seed impotent, placing our entire food supply in doubt. It sounds like something from the trashier end of a Hollywood writer’s room, but there’s hard science behind this horror story. A UN report claimed that an increase of the world’s

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UPFRONT

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temperature by just one degree could reduce agricultural yield by two per cent, meaning that our future could depend on seeds that enjoy sunbaking.

These seeds do exist, or, at least, they did. Hundreds of years of crop cultivation have taught farmers to depend on seeds capable of surviving harsh winters, drought, rapacious insects and malnourished soil.

Any not immediately useful have been allowed to disappear. In the US alone, 90 per cent of fruit and vegetable varieties have been lost since the 1900s, according to The Crop Trust – an advocacy group dedicated to promoting crop diversity. To put it bluntly, our food is going extinct.

“Crop diversity can be seen as the building blocks of agriculture,” says Marie Hagga, executive director of The Crop Trust. “To adapt, for example, wheat to higher temperatures, we need to go back to the 125,000 varieties of wheat to search for the maybe only one variety that can help us do exactly that. Crop diversity is one of our most important natural resources and global common goods. It is a prerequisite of food security. If we lose one of the 200,000 varieties of rice, we might lose the one that could have helped our children fight a new disease on rice, or have rice adapt to more unpredictable weather. Losing crop diversity simply means creating a more food insecure world.”

The Svalbard Seed Vault currently houses 870,000 samples of seed, sealed away and stored at -18 degrees

Anticipating this scenario, many nations built genebanks to store seed samples, ensuring even those that haven’t been used for hundreds of years don’t disappear entirely. In theory, if a terrible disease ravages our cabbages, scientists would be able to engineer a hardier type from the seeds held in storage. So far so good, except what happens when conflict or ecological disaster threatens these genebanks? This is where humanity’s million insurance policy pays off. In 2008, Norway opened The Svalbard Seed Vault, a huge facility capable of housing samples of every single seed in the world. Nations are encouraged to donate copies of the seeds held in their own genebanks so they have a secondary store to fall back on should the worst come to the worst.

These are then sealed away and stored at -18 degrees, ensuring they remain viable for the foreseeable future. It’s proven a popular idea, and currently houses 870,000 samples from 230 countries, with more arriving every year.

“Sadly we lose crop diversity every day in the field, as well as in many of the world’s plant genebanks – where seeds in theory should be safe, but in many cases aren’t due to lack of resources and funding,” says Cierra Martin, partnerships and communications assistant at The Crop Trust. “Something as mundane as a poorly functioning freezer can ruin an entire collection. And extinct is forever.

There is a lack of investment in genebanks and in the institutions that safeguard this material.”

This is not an accusation that could be levelled at the Svalbard Seed Vault, which was built at a cost of $9 million by the Kingdom of Norway, and is funded by the Norwegian government and The Crop Trust – which funds and supports genebanks around the world – allowing nations to store their seeds for free.

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DECEMBER ISSUE 132

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“We absolutely had to situate the vault in a country that was respected and trusted globally,” the vault’s inventor Cary Fowler told Live Science. “Particularly in relation to the issue of biodiversity, which can have politically contentious aspects.

Norway fits the bill in this regard rather better than any other; it is admired and trusted.”

As snug a fit as Norway may be politically, it’s geography that really sealed the deal. Located 1,300 kilometres beyond the Arctic Circle, The Svalbard Seed Vault sits 120 metres inside a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen Island, a site chosen for its lack of tectonic activity and permafrost, which will keep the seeds cool for several weeks even if the refrigeration equipment fails. Samples are packaged in special three-ply foil packets and heat sealed to exclude moisture, before being placed in black boxes that only the donating country can access. Built to be disaster-proof, the vault is high enough to survive a drastic increase in sea level and is earthquake proof. No wonder it’s earned the nickname, “the doomsday vault.”

Less than 10 years after it opened, it’s already come in handy. In October 2012, The International Center For Agricultural Research In The Dry Areas (ICARDA), which had been headquartered in Aleppo since 1975, was forced to abandon its genebank due to the on-going Syrian war, leaving behind 135,000 varieties of wheat, fava bean, lentil and chickpea crops, as well as the world’s most valuable barley collection.

“These are land races that were inherited from our grandgrandparents, and most of them are unfortunately extinct now,” says ICARDA’s director general, Dr Mahmoud Solh. “And this is where the cradle of agriculture was 10,000 years ago. In this part of the world, many of the important

UPFRONT / SVALBARD SEED

US$9

million – cost of building the Svalbard Seed Vault

Should the worst come to the worst, there’s a big door in the middle of the Artic everybody’s going to be knocking on

crops were domesticated from the wild to cultivation.”

Using these samples, ICARDA was developing new strains of drought and heat-resistant wheat, incredibly valuable research that was under threat by the escalating conflict. Thankfully, they’d already managed to ship duplicates of 85 per cent of their collection to neighbouring genebanks, as well as the Svalbard Seed Vault, and local staff who remained behind continued their work, despite the danger. Their efforts paid dividends in 2015, when ICARDA scientists accessed their samples in Norway, in order to start new genebanks in Lebanon and Morocco. From the threat of annihilation, the team had managed to recover and continue their work.

Given this, you’d think governments would be lining up to store their samples in the Svalbard Seed Vault, but according to the Crop Trust, there’s still plenty of work left

to be done. “Some countries don’t see the benefit as much as others, as often they see their national programmes in regards to conservation, as sufficient,” says Martin. “Some governments are more educated on this issue than others, but I would say overall, many governments don’t fully understand the importance of crop diversity conservation. More and more governments are beginning to realise the importance of crop diversity for their country on more than one front – from food security to economic stability. Yet, governments don’t always have a long-term perspective. Many are thinking in terms of election cycles and the crises we see on the news today, and the Crop Trust’s work is seen as a long-term solution.”

It’s a good job somebody’s looking at the big picture, because should the worst come to the worst, there’s a big door in the middle of the Artic everybody’s going to be knocking on.

DECEMBER ISSUE 132

UPFRONT / SPEND 1

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SONUS FABER SF16 The 1,400w system looks beautiful, but also has all the high-end

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features you need in a modern system. It supports MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC and WAV, and can handle hi-res audio up to 24-bit/192kHz. Up to eight Sonus Faber SF16s can be connected to create a wireless multi-room system. The all-in-one wireless music streaming system is supported by the likes of Tidal, Deezer, Spotify and Amazon Music, and it can be operated from your phone via the app. $12,475, sonusfaber.com

The electric toothbrush delivers 31,000 strokes per minute but, more importantly, the smart sensor in the toothbrush sends data back to the app and lets you know if you’re missing parts, over- or under-brushing to ensure you get the best out of the toothbrush every time. It also lets you know when the brush head needs replacing and lets you order some straight from your phone. $199, philips.com

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It comes in a leather case and looks analogue, but lets you connect to your digital devices in style. $725, montblanc.com

For those Apple fans who love the smell of a fresh new Mac, this candle slowly gives off the scent of a brand new box-fresh computer, without the creeping dread of the inevitable Adobe and Java updates and software installing that comes with a new Macintosh. $24, twelvesouth.com

The Art Of Tattooing Once regarded as a sign of social exclusion, tattoos are today considered a legitimate form of body art

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Tobias Grey

W

hen American tattoo artist Scott Campbell brought his Whole Glory project to London for last October’s Frieze art fair it was as if Willy Wonka had come to town dispensing a batch of rare golden tickets. By 10 o’clock an enormous queue of hopeful participants had formed outside the Lazarides Gallery in Covent Garden, where Campbell was ensconced in a small room with a hole in one wall. A lottery system established, six volunteers were selected to stick their forearm through said hole and have it tattooed with a mystery design of Campbell’s choosing.

The 39-year-old describes the process as “an exchange of faith” because the Whole Glory project demands no communication or contact with his subjects except for the ink he injects into their arms.

The fact that Whole Glory was one of the biggest draws at this year’s Frieze is symptomatic of how tattooing has begun to cast off its outlaw image and be accepted as a respectable art form on its own terms.

“Tattoos are part of pop culture now,” says Campbell. “All of a sudden people are taking it as seriously as any other art form. It’s nice to see it be legitimised by an art fair like the Frieze because it’s definitely been something that was overlooked or swept under the rug for a long time.”

Museums are also pricking up their ears. One of the most popular exhibitions in Europe of recent times was 2014’s Tatoueurs Tatoués at Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, which notched up more than 700,000 visitors. The exhibition, which featured tattooed silicon body parts and an on-site tattoo parlour, then travelled to Toronto where it was shown at the Royal Ontario Museum and is currently on show at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Campbell’s antiquely ornamental tattoos, which adorn the bodies of celebrities like Robert Downey, Jr, Howard Stern, Marc Jacobs and Courtney Love, can run into thousands of dollars and he is by no means the only tattooist able to charge these kind of rates.

The novelty of the Whole Glory project, though, which has also had outings in New York, LA

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The arT of TaTTooing

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and Moscow, is that the volunteers don’t have to pay a thing but neither do they get a say in the kind of tattoo they receive. It came as a surprise to Campbell that this actually proved to be a liberating experience for most. “One of the things that caught me off guard was that for over half the people that came it was their first tattoo,” he says. “In talking to some of them afterwards what had kept them from getting tattooed was the pressure of deciding what to get – here you had a situation where you decide to trust someone and just let them decide.”

Campbell, who grew up in Louisiana and trained as a biochemist, developed the project as a way of bridging the gap between what he describes as his “non-living works and living works”. Alongside his tattooing Campbell has also developed a parallel career as a painter, sculptor and draftsman.

“Tattooing is what my hands know how to do better than anything,” he says. “So I began thinking what if I could do tattoos with the same freedom as when I paint or draw? Whole Glory is an attempt to see what that feels like.”

Since Campbell began tattooing almost 20 years ago he has witnessed a sea change in people’s attitudes to being inked. “When I started tattooing it was just criminals and sailors, now it’s everywhere you look,” he says. “Tattooing has been hijacked by mall culture – it’s become a different thing.”

Campbell, who sports a variety of tattoos, can remember how it used to be when he’d go through customs at airports in the United States and if he’d forgotten to put on a long-sleeved shirt how he’d invariably be pulled over and have his baggage searched. Nowadays members of airport security are just as likely to have their own tattoos.

The advent of the internet and in particular the rise of Instagram has helped to give tattooing a second artistic life. “There is now an immediate global conversation about tattooing – something that could never have happened before,” says Campbell.

“I’ll do a tattoo and post it on Instagram. Two days later I’ll see somebody on the other side of the world do a tattoo. That’s a reaction to what I did.”

The artistic quality of tattooing has also improved exponentially. For many years western tattooers and tattoo wearers showed little interest in a tattoo’s aesthetic value. During the earliest days of machine tattooing at the end of the 19th century the act was still linked with the so-called lower classes and the armed services, especially sailors. The tattoos were often crude – a cheap alternative to Indian ink was pigment derived from soot mixed with water – and their virtue, if they had any, was derived from their barefaced boldness.

In Europe tattooing was often regarded as a sign of social exclusion, while in Asia it was often

“I’ll do a tattoo and post it on Instagram.

Two days later I’ll see somebody on the other side of the world do a tattoo”

redolent of the criminal underworld. Tattooing’s wider use was frequently reserved for coercive branding. Up until 1871 British soldiers found guilty of desertion were tattooed with the letters ‘D’ for desertion and ‘BC’ for bad character.

There were of course some notable exceptions.

In the 19th century a craze for tattoos broke out among the royal families of Europe. In 1862 the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII, received his first tattoo, a Jerusalem cross done by Francois Souwan, while he was in Jerusalem. Later Edward’s sons the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York (later George V) were both inked by the famed Japanese tattooist Hori Chiyo.

However, it was not until the late 1960s that tattooing coincided with women’s lib and the start of the hippie movement to become part of society’s countercultural fabric. American tattoo artists like Ed Hardy, Mike Malone, Jack Rudy, Bob Roberts and Lyle Tuttle ushered in a tattoo renaissance, which moved tattooing away from the customary smallscale, folk-inspired motifs to broad, unified designs spanning large swathes of skin.

The arT of TaTTooing

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After tattooing singers like Janis Joplin and Cher, Tuttle even appeared on the October 1970 cover of Rolling Stone magazine. In the early 1980s Tuttle along with Ed Hardy spearheaded the creation of the first American tattoo conventions and specialised publications such as Hardy’s influential New Tribalism magazine.

The American tattoo renaissance soon spread its way across the Atlantic after visiting European tattooists like the Dutch artist Henk Schiffmacher began organising conventions of their own. In the mid-1980s Schiffmacher, whose clients have included Kurt Cobain, Lemmy and members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, began hosting a series of conventions in Amsterdam that were open to the public.

Since 2013 the self-taught French tattoo artist Tin-Tin has been doing the same in Paris with his Mondial de Tatouage, which annually hosts more than 300 tattoo artists from around the world. TinTin, who co-founded France’s first tattooists’ trade union, the SNAT (Syndicat National des Artistes de Tatoueurs) in 2003, is known in the tattoo world for his hyperrealist portrait style inspired by Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Raphael.

“For a long time I have been fighting for tattooing to be recognised as an art form in its own right and for tattooers to be considered artists,” he says. The 51-year-old artist, who first began tattooing in 1984 during a stint of military service in Berlin, has notably collaborated with French fashion designers like Hubert de Givenchy and Jean-Paul Gaultier, who have used his temporary tattoo designs in their catwalk shows.

The walls of Tin-Tin’s tattoo studio in Paris’ red-light district Pigalle are chock-full of trophies he has won in tattooing competitions from around the world. A burly man with tattoo-covered arms, Tin-Tin (a nickname which grew out of his first name Constantin) is a proponent of ‘freehand’ tattooing whereby he felt-tip draws a tattoo’s design directly onto the skin of a subject as opposed to using a stencil.

Tin-Tin, who keeps a close eye on the work of his contemporaries, believes that the overall quality of tattooing has improved thanks to the internet. “At that moment all the tricks of the trade that tattoo artists had previously kept to themselves became widely available,” he says. “That impacted tattooers all over the world. There’s some amazing work being done in China and Russia – places where there was very little tattooing before.”

He also sees master tattooists establishing schools of style not unlike the painting schools of yore. “There are all sorts of styles,” he says.

“There’s the realist style that I practice, but also the biomechanical style that Guy Aitchison created with

TOP FIVE MOST HIGHLY PAID ARTISTS 1.Scott Campbell – $1,000 Campbell charges $1,000 for the first hour and $200 for every hour after that.

In 2005 he opened his shop Saved Tattoo in New York.

“I charge a lot because time is limited and I really like hanging out with my family,” he says. “So if I’m taking time away from my family that’s how much it costs to pull me away.”

2. Ami James – $500 per hour James is the man behind tattoo-themed shows Miami Ink and NY Ink. His shop Love Hate Tattoos is in Miami. He specialises in Japanese designs.

3. Anil Gupta – $450 per hour Indian-born Gupta’s reputation is such that clients must book sessions six months in advance at his New York shop Inkline.

Gupta specialises in tribalinspired tattoos and hyperrealistic portraits. His clients include actor Christian Slater and former tennis player John McEnroe.

4. Paul Booth – $300 per hour Booth is known for his freehand work and for helping to create the Art Fusion Experiment – a collaborative training experience for tattoo artists. He is known for his Gothic and horror images.

Clients of his Last Rites Tattoo Theatre in New York include fixtures of the heavy metal music scene.

5. Kat Von D – $200+ per hour Kat Von D became widely known after appearing on all four seasons of Miami Ink. She has her own studio High Voltage Tattoos in Los Angeles. In 2008 she created a make-up line for Sephora. Her clients include Lady Gaga.

Aaron Cane during the 1990s in the United States, as well as all the different tribal styles.”

Tattooing is also appealing to a new generation of millennials looking to express themselves artistically. There is none of the hassle associated with the traditional art world of having to deal with intermediaries, galleries and agents. “I fell into tattooing because I was just really passionate about drawing pictures and I was really terrible at having a regular job,” recalls Campbell. “I figured that tattooing was at least a good way to feed myself so I would never have to worry about hustling for money or survival, and as soon as I started I really fell in love with it.”

These days Campbell is often referred to as the tattooist to the stars. It’s not something that particularly fazes him and it certainly doesn’t affect the way he works. “If you’re a movie star or a bartender that tattoo still carries my name and my reputation and I put the exact same amount of energy into all of them,” he says. “When Heath Ledger came and got tattooed I didn’t know he was famous. He was just this anxious Australian guy who came in off the street.”

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DECAYING CITIES

THE DAVOS EFFECT How decaying cities, fear of crime and astronomical prices are leading the world’s elite to invest in remote sanctuaries Eugene Costello

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DECAYING CITIES

C

an cities survive as a sustainable model for housing our citizens? Surely, sheer weight of population would suggest that they represent the most logical way of centralising resources for the benefit of all?

It seems, though, their primacy is not assured – experts talk of phenomena such as the “Paris effect” and the “Detroit effect”. In recent years, much of the small talk at international gatherings of the super-rich such as Davos – the location of the winter gathering for the World Economic Forum – has focused on the increasing numbers among them who are buying up expensive boltholes in remote areas such as New Zealand, driven largely by fear of crime, such as kidnappings and ransoms in Latin America, to the recent jewellery heist in the Parisian apartment where model and reality TV star Kim Kardashian was residing at the time.

Sure, there’s something about the theme of decaying civilisations and “dying cities” that grasps the zeitgeist, stirring in our collective psyches something visceral, intuitively, instinctively thrilling and shocking at the same time. It’s a powerful leitmotif in culture – the long-dead, once-mighty king Ozymandias in Shelley’s eponymous poem reduced to a partially buried statue in a desert with no sign of the cities he once commanded; the Statue Of Liberty barely visible, buried chest-deep in the shocking final scene of Planet Of The Apes (Charlton Heston, not Mark Wahlberg); the Mad Max film franchise; and the dystopian worlds of Escape From New York and Blade Runner.

Conversely, from the 1970s to the 1990s there were breathless, excitable magazine features and documentaries about the growth of the 21st-century supercity – both fictional, as in UK sci-fi comic 2001AD (how quaint, with hindsight) where “lawgiver” Judge Dredd gunned his Harley substitute around MegaCity One – and real, sprawling behemoths such as Tokyo (34.3 million inhabitants), Shanghai (24.8 million), Mumbai (23 million) or Mexico City (22.9 million). These cities, the argument went, would grow out of the dysfunctional, dystopian ruins of the cities that preceded them.

As with so many social trends, there is truth on both sides. First, let’s examine the Detroit effect.

There’s long been a trend in North American cities to abandon the centre and head in droves for the suburbs. Nowhere has this been more in evidence than in Detroit – Motown, for many years the epicentre of the once-formidable auto industry.

In the 1950s, Detroit was an expanding, wealthy city with factories turning out cars that were the envy of the world. Handsome civic buildings in the city centre attested to municipal pride, and by the 1950s its citizens enjoyed the highest average incomes and the top rate of home ownership of all US cities. The incredible rise of Motown attested to the feel-good factor its residents – some two million of them – felt.

Decades of white flight and the near-total collapse of the car industry mean that 60 years later the population has more than halved and many parts of the city have been as good as abandoned, with grass growing out of the pavements and roads, buildings standing empty, eschewed even by the homeless and drug-addicted who have far better abandoned housing stock from which to pick. Tellingly, not one single major US supermarket or grocery chain has an outlet in the city, underscoring the feel of a city that is gradually being abandoned back to nature.

Famously photographed extensively by two French photographers for a coffee-table art book, images of Detroit became synonymous with those of Chernobyl – abandoned classrooms, derelict houses, whole neighbourhoods of them, empty streets. And yet, Robert Beauregard, Professor of Urban Planning, Graduate School Of Architecture, Planning And Preservation, Columbia University, New York, has a different perspective on what he terms “ruins porn”.

“People in this world [urban planning] would not use the word ‘dying’ to describe a city – the word we would use is ‘shrinking’. A city can shrink without dying, and of course dying is a loaded word that suggests death. There is an argument that describes the obsession with what you term ‘dying’ cities as being ‘ruins porn’, famously as in the case of Detroit, where you had photographers going in and aestheticising the ruins as objects.”

“So shrinking is a more useful term, and in fact it replaced what we used to call them, which was declining cities. And in the case of the US in the ’60 and ’70s you had a whole bunch of articles saying, look, the cities are dying. Whereas people now are less negative, and say, yes, they are shrinking, but how about we find ways to stabilise the slowdown and even promote new, different kinds of growth? There is an argument, for instance, for saying that Detroit should be a city of 500,000, that it should never have gotten as big as 1.8 million people or whatever.”

Detroit should be a city of 500,000… it should never have gotten as big as 1.8 million

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DECAYING CITIES

The real reason for the shrinking of cities such as Detroit is, of course, the economy. “Both here in the US, in the UK and elsewhere, you had a pretty substantial decline in heavy industry,” says Beauregard. “In the UK you had these great cities born of heavy industry in Victorian times, such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and they are suddenly losing their raison d’être by losing industry to off-shore. And the same here in the US, with places such as Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, St Louis, Pittsburgh… their economies were collapsing, and that was part of that era. And to compound matters, here in the US we had a huge south-to-north

In recent years, Davos has been followed by headlines talking of the rich “fleeing” cities and looking for private boltholes

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migration, meaning that African-Americans were moving from the agricultural South to look for work in the North just as all the jobs were disappearing.”

So is there a future for cities such as Detroit that have lost their economic and industrial purpose?

Well, up to a point, says Beauregard, “There are some neighbourhoods that are just about viable, although they are pretty much on the edge. I was speaking to a colleague a couple of years back who was living right there in the centre in a community that was just about holding its own, and he said, ‘Yes, the housing value has dropped to the point that it is now stabilised and we can see a future. But all it would take would be two or three neighbours to throw the towel in and we’re screwed.’ You know, these are not stable neighbourhoods.”

Beauregard points out that the current population of Detroit is still sizeable, in excess of 700,000, but that the crux of the problem is that the population is all spread out, so huge swathes of suburbs are being left to go to ruin, and a lot of the industrial areas are not viable now that industry has gone.

“What this means is, that you get pockets where the neighbourhoods seem kinda viable but they are spread out over large areas.”

Beauregard gives the example of one such pocket, that of Midtown. “If I dropped you into Midtown, where you’ve got the university and the teaching hospital, you’d think, oh my, what a nice, middleclass neighbourhood with lots of cultural activities and nice shops and bars. I stayed there a while back

The Sultan of Brunei is one of the investers in Herne Bay, Auckland’s prime real estate neighbourhood

in a bed-and-breakfast and it was charming. And on the other side of Downtown, there is a housing project by the famous architect Mies van der Lowe, and that is doing great. But as I say, these are pockets, and pockets do not a city make.”

While the lower middle-classes might be drawn to a cool van der Lowe apartment, it’s not going to save the city, says Beauregard. “You keep hearing about Detroit and artists and hipsters, that they are moving to Detroit and they are living in innercity communities and growing food and painting and sculpting, and all the rest of it,” he says with a slightly cynical New York drawl. “But there’s no scale, there’s no industry, there’s no jobs. The hipsters, I am sorry to say, are not going to make any real difference.”

The challenge when a city shrinks so drastically is one of allocating resources, he says, pointing out that it is hard to provide civic services such as

DECAYING CITIES

schools and hospitals, not to mention shops, when there are only two or three households left in a particular neighbourhood.

And it is not a problem that is simply confined to cities such as Detroit, as Beauregard points out, whose future was predicated upon a manufacturing base that has since disappeared. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 there was a huge exodus – to call it a diaspora would be no exaggeration – of “Ossies”, as East Berliners were called. In the process, more than a million apartments were simply abandoned, leading the German government to found the Shrinking Cities Project, devoted to studying what is becoming a global phenomenon, looking at cities such as Berlin, Leipzig, Detroit and Manchester and Liverpool in the UK. Which brings us neatly to the second phenomenon, what might be called the “Paris effect”. Looking at London in particular, the astronomical rise in the

“I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places”

price of property over the past decade means, some argue, that it will become more akin to Paris where the only super-rich can afford to live in the centre, with the poor banished to the farthest outreaches of the city and only travelling in to the centre to do the menial service jobs required for tourists, residents and office workers. A recent study found the average price of a property in the UK to be an astonishing eight times the typical wage; in London, where prices are jaw-droppingly higher than the rest of the UK, it is no exaggeration to say that, as things stand, the dream of home ownership will, for the vast majority, remain just that – a dream.

It is this gulf between rich and poor, and the simply unattainable nature of property prices for the majority, that has been sending jitters throughout the super-rich community. In the past couple of years, Davos has been followed by sensationalist headlines talking of the rich “fleeing” cities and looking for private boltholes. Hysteria aside, there is a degree of truth in this phenomenon, what we might term the “Davos effect”, that has been, at least in part, responsible for what Jeremy O’Hanlon, head of marketing at New Zealand property tracking service Property NZ Ltd (homes.co.nz), tells Portfolio has been “a skyrocketing of prices” over the past three years. By way of example, he points to a property on his website, 15 Marine Parade in prime waterfront location Herne Bay, Auckland. In October 2012, it was valued at NZ$7.35 million; four years later, it is currently listed at NZ$12.36 million. That’s some capital growth…

As far back as January 2015, Robert Johnson, president of the Institute Of New Economic Thinking, revealed that the widening inequality in the northern hemisphere was causing jitters among many of the super-rich who didn’t believe an apocalyptic descent into lawlessness and chaos to be too far-flung a possibility. Said Johnson: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.”

Pointing out that this gulf that could lead to such a nightmarish scenario for the rich wasn’t just happening in the likes of Latin America but in supposedly wealthy countries in, say, western Europe, Johnson added: “People need to know there are possibilities for their children, that they will have the same opportunities as anyone else.”

And that is why New Zealand, for many, is the bolthole of choice. Officially the third safest country in the world, it has beautiful landscapes, superb properties and a stable society offering good education and leisure options. O’Hanlon refers me to Auckland-based real-estate brokers Graham Wall (grahamwall.com). I spoke to one of two sons

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DECAYING CITIES

48

of the eponymous founder, the irrepressibly cheerful Andrew Wall who is almost messianic about how great his country is, and what fantastic opportunities it offers the “increasing numbers of international businessmen who are queuing up to buy here”.

Graham Wall Senior set the firm up in 2002; one of his first clients was the Sultan of Brunei, who could see the potential and was drawn to Auckland’s prime real estate neighbourhood, Herne Bay. “It’s a fantastic site, two minutes from the city centre, with absolute tranquillity and security, dotted about with lots of green, boatsheds and private beaches,” says Wall. That waterfront strip accounts for the country’s biggest deals – “that deal was for about NZ$30 million for 11 plots, which seemed astronomical then but would be a bargain now, but it’s probably fair to say that it was the Sultan who really kickstarted the international interest.”

Last year, the biggest sale in New Zealand was around the corner from there, a property called Sentinel that sold for NZ$24 million. That happened

Above: A property in Westmere in Auckland Top: Graham Wall and his two sons

People need to know there are possibilities for their children

to be a Kiwi buyer, but the year before the biggest deal had been for NZ$39 million to a Chinese buyer.

“The media focuses on the Chinese but actually our international clients are from all over the world.

A recent client fitted your description [of the types mentioned at Davos] perfectly – a New Yorker coming out of Zurich who wanted to move out here with his lovely family. We sold him a beautiful property for NZ$18 million on Burwood Crescent in Remuera, which is traditionally the neighbourhood that old money is drawn to.” (In March of this year, Prime Minister John Key revealed that he had once been burgled while living on the same street, saying that “the whole house was cleaned out”.)

The New Yorker also bought a property on the South Island, near Queenstown, and Graham Wall sees a lot of clients opting for a rural idyll down there, says [son Andrew] Wall, “Queenstown started out as little more than a village servicing three ski fields down there, but now it’s a genuine city. It has fantastic restaurants and the setting is breathtaking as it sits over a lake surrounded by mountains.

There are some really great parcels of land down there that fit the bill of what you call ‘boltholes’ – we sold one big parcel to [Facebook and PayPal investor] Peter Thiel and similar parcels to a lot of other guys from Silicon Valley.”

The area where Thiel bought is called Damper Bay, at Wanaka, Queenstown Lakes – “a really wonderful part of the world that has managed to keep its remote feeling because of some clever work by the council. Each parcel is a massive site, acres upon acres, but you can only have one residence on the site, and even that residence has to be hidden from the eyeline on the lake.” So local architects have become especially skilled in coming up with daring contemporary designs that manage to blend in with the landscape”.

So what are the hot new areas that the superrich will head for now that Herne Bay sounds like it is at saturation point? “My tip,” says Wall, “is a neighbourhood called Westmere in Auckland.

We are currently marketing two properties there, one at NZ$10 million and one at NZ$20 million, and it’s a fantastic up-and-coming area.” One is tempted to make a point about NZ$20 millionproperties hardly being up-and-coming, but one resists. “We’ve had to take the NZ$20 million property off the market temporarily to rent it to a production company who wanted somewhere for their stars to stay while shooting a film here.”

Is he allowed to say which stars? Wall gives an easy, New Zealand laugh, and says, “Yeah, sure, no worries. Have you heard of Jason Statham and his wife Rosie Huntington-Whiteley?” There goes the neighbourhood, then…

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RERA No. 3540

WEALTH MANAGERS

INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF WEALTH MANAGERS

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They know more about their clients than the clients’ own wives. They are loyal in the face of appalling behaviour.

They are the brains behind the most ingenious tax avoidance schemes. And there are more of them than ever

WEALTH MANAGERS

Brooke Harrington

Ralph Mancao

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WEALTH MANAGERS

T

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he Pritzker family is one of the wealthiest in the United States. Their assets, which amount to US$15 billion, are held in 60 companies and 2,500 trusts, using structures and strategies that Forbes magazine – normally a cheerleader for wealthy elites – describes with an unusual hint of moral distaste as “shadowy… constructed to discourage outside inquiry – and brilliantly exploitative of loopholes in the tax code.”

This complex asset-holding structure was created not by the Pritzker family itself but by its lawyers, accountants, tax specialists and investment advisers.

In this respect, the Pritzkers are no different to tens of thousands of super-rich families and individuals worldwide, who use the services of wealth managers.

These professionals not only shelter wealth from taxation but, in the words of one academic paper, serve to “obscure concentrations of economic power”, using vehicles that make it difficult, if not impossible, to identify the true owners of wealth.

The work of wealth managers has been described by some leading practitioners as a defence against the depredations of “confiscatory states”. Much of these professionals’ day-to-day practice occurs in an ethical grey area – a realm of activity that is formally legal but socially illegitimate. This includes the use of trusts, offshore corporations and similar tools to help clients avoid paying tax, debts to creditors or alimony to ex-spouses. Following the financial crisis and news stories such as the Panama Papers, these tactics – many of which are also used by corporations to avoid taxation and regulation – are attracting increasing public attention and condemnation.

The profession – whose main representative body is the London-based Society For Trust And Estate Practitioners (Step) – has been singled out for blame in several countries by government agencies concerned with tax evasion, money laundering, and growing worldwide wealth inequality. In its 2006 Seoul declaration, the Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD) made special mention of the roles played by ‘‘law and accounting firms, other tax advisers and financial institutions” in helping companies and individuals find ways round international laws. In 2003, the nowretired Democrat senator Carl Levin complained to a US Senate subcommittee about the asset-holding structures created by wealth managers to obscure their clients’ assets: “Most are so complex that they are Megos – ‘My Eyes Glaze Over’ type of schemes.

Those who cook up these concoctions count on their complexity to escape scrutiny and public ire.”

As world wealth has grown to record levels in recent years – to an estimated $241 trillion – inequality has also grown, with 0.7 per cent of the

P R I T Z K E R F A M I LY

global population owning 41 per cent of the assets.

Wealth managers are estimated to direct the flows of up to $21 trillion in private wealth, resulting in about $200 billion in lost tax revenues globally each year.

In effect, these professionals detach assets from the states that wish to tax and regulate them, creating a form of capital that is, like its owners, transnational and hypermobile. Doing so involves creating not just asset-holding and tax-avoidance structures but a new body of transnational institutions, which are expanding outside of any democratic process of checks and balances. In this way, the rise of the super-rich and the wealth management industry is creating an elite who are increasingly ungoverned and ungovernable.

The wealthy and powerful are notoriously difficult to study. Within this domain, wealth management presents particular challenges, as the profession depends on secrecy and is governed by a code of conduct that requires strict privacy.

As a sociologist intent on understanding the world of wealth management, I started my research by going back to school. In November 2007, I enrolled in a two-year wealth management training programme. My goal was to obtain a credential that is now the accepted global standard for practitioners: the TEP, or Trust And Estate Planning certification.

To earn the credential, you need to pass five courses in key domains of technical competence: trust law, corporate law, investments, finance, and accounting.

Between 2008 and 2015, I conducted 65 interviews with wealth managers in 18 countries, including Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mauritius, and

WEALTH MANAGERS

had been “vilified” as being “immoral for not paying as much tax as some people think they should”. He added that one local wealth manager had suggested that I “should be thrown off the island”.

I was so taken aback by this statement that I simply thanked the man for his time, shook his hand, and walked back to the bar at my hotel to have a drink. I was unaware then of a precedent: just two years previously, the Channel Islands tax haven of Jersey had detained, deported, and ultimately banned a reporter from Newsweek magazine for investigating claims of illegal activity there. Even though the story had no connection to financial services, it was expected to bring negative publicity to the island, threatening its reputation as a quiet, off-the-radar place for elites to park their fortunes. Remarkably, the local financial authorities were so well connected that they managed to bar the reporter not only from re-entering Jersey but also from entering the United Kingdom.

British crown dependencies and overseas territories such as Guernsey, Jersey, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. I also conducted interviews in the newer financial centres, particularly those serving the growing wealth of Asia, such as the Seychelles.

Only once my findings started to be published, about six years into the project, did anyone treat me with open hostility. In August 2013, I conducted a prearranged interview in the British Virgin Islands with a white British man in his 60s, who was a banker by training. He greeted me by saying that he had read my two recently published papers and found

The work of wealth managers has been described by some leading practitioners as a defence against the depredations of “confiscatory states” my work to be “left-leaning” and “disapproving of what the [wealth management] industry and wealthy people are doing”. He added that the islands’ wealth management community were all wondering what I was doing here. Although he graciously answered my interview questions, he was not done with the subject of my “agenda”. At the end of the interview, he crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, and expressed his resentment that wealth managers and their clients

L

earning of this story made me view the conversation with the British Virgin Islands banker in a new light. Not only did it underscore the way that the wealth management profession can influence state authorities, at least offshore; it also highlighted the value of taking an immersive approach to my research. Had I tried approaching wealth management as a total outsider – like the reporter from Newsweek – this study would probably never have got off the ground.

The bonds that wealth managers develop with their clients are unusual. For one thing, they last a very long time. The legal scholar John Langbein once characterised wealth management in terms of “relationships of long and uncertain duration, usually measured in lives”.

Like a family doctor or lawyer, a wealth manager is privy to highly sensitive information. Unlike in other professions, however, these intimate details are not confined to one area of the client’s life. James, who is based in London, explained that clients “have to pick someone they want to know everything about them: about mother’s lesbian affairs, brother’s drug addiction, the spurned lovers bursting into the room”.

The wealth manager’s job is to protect clients’ money from risk: this includes not just from bad investments but other possibilities, such as spendthrift heirs burning through the family assets or relatives with embarrassing secrets that could make them vulnerable to blackmail. “It’s like being a voyeur… the client has to undress in front of you,” said Eleanor, an American working in Switzerland.

Elaine, an English wealth manager working in the Middle East, said, “They tell you lots of secrets, these clients, things they would never tell their

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WEALTH MANAGERS

bankers. You are their confidant. You are so trusted – you have to be totally confidential. A client will say to me, ‘I want to leave money to my girlfriend, but I don’t want my wife to know.’”

The super-rich are often extremely sceptical about the motives of people around them. “People who have a lot of money can become very suspicious and isolated,” Robert, who works in Guernsey, told me. “They become convinced that everyone who meets them is trying to take advantage of them.”

Often this suspicion is justified. Many of the professionals I interviewed agreed that high-net-worth individuals often become targets for unscrupulous individuals. As Mark, an English wealth manager put it, “People want to con them, scam them, rob them, kidnap them.” What is more, these threats can come not just from strangers but from governments and even those closest to them.

James, from London, specialises in protecting elderly clients from exploitation by relatives. He told me: “I do deal with some tricky families … It’s about being there for the person and being someone they can rely on, often beyond the way that the person can rely on their own flesh and blood, because we don’t stand to get an inheritance from them.”

The air of paranoia that wealth can bring to the family dynamic is nothing new. According to the historian Scott L Waugh, documents from 13th-century England record court battles among nobles in which the proceedings are marked by “a widespread distrust of family wolves hungering after an inheritance”.

Some wealth managers liken their role to that of a cleric or confidant. Sherman in the British Virgin Islands said: “We’re a bit like the consigliere in The Godfather.” For clients, many of whom are surrounded by impatient heirs and yes-men, the opportunity to talk through their problems with someone discreet and honest is a valuable service in and of itself. Marian, who works in Los Angeles, told me: “My ex-husband always used to say, ‘She does social work for the rich.’”

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ometimes, after the death of a client, a wealth manager must break the news of a client’s inheritance plan to the potential heirs and sort out any family conflicts that may ensue. In other cases, they may end up in the role of detective, trying to piece together clues about aspects of the client’s fortune that were kept secret from everyone. Alistair, who is based in the Cayman Islands, recalled working with a “wealthy family in Jamaica” in which “the father died, not having told any single person all of his financial affairs. There was no one person who knew everything he had and

where it was. He told each family member and a few trusted friends just little bits, but not the whole picture. And now, three years after his death, we’re still locating his assets”.

Determining whether a wealth manager is worthy of their trust is a key concern of elite clients. Several people in the profession told me that they had been asked to perform extraordinary acts of service in the early stages of their relationship with a new client, simply to prove that they were up to the job. For example, Eleanor told me of one person who called her office in Geneva and told her: “I’m outside a restaurant in London and I just lost a bracelet – I need you to find it.” In other words, the client was asking her to locate a missing piece of jewellery outside an unnamed building in another country.

Eleanor somehow did this, billed for her time, and earned a loyal client for decades to come. “The very rich are willing to pay for that extra-special bespoke service – just like suits,” said Mark.

“I had one client who asked me to send him $100,000 from company funds so that he could buy a Ferrari. I had to say no”

David, a British wealth manager who is nearing the end of a 40-year career in Hong Kong, had a particularly impressive story: “I was phoned up from Osaka once, by a client who said, ‘I’m sitting across from Owagi-san, who speaks no English, but we are bowing to each other. He has just said to me through a translator that he needs a thousand sides of smoked salmon by Tuesday, and I’m relying on you to get them.’ I said, ‘I’m your wealth manager, not your fishmonger.’ And the client said, ‘Well, today you’re a fishmonger.’ So I had to ring up a friend who knew the guy from Unilever who runs the smoked salmon plant in Scotland. And the plant manager made it happen.”

From time to time, wealth managers may have to say no to their clients for legal reasons. Bruce, who works in Geneva, recounted one such case: “I had one client who asked me to send him $100,000 from company funds so that he could buy a Ferrari. I had to say no, and he said, ‘What do you mean, no?’ I said, ‘This is a company and you’re a shareholder, so perhaps you’re requesting a distribution?’ I had to coach him on the right words to use, and said, ‘Would

WEALTH MANAGERS

you please delete those emails you sent me requesting the cash for the Ferrari?’”

A century ago, wealth managers’ clients were known collectively as “the leisure class”, a group that probably numbered in the low four figures, concentrated in North America and Europe. These days they are far more diverse, and distributed all over the world. Today’s client base includes the world’s 167,669 “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” – people who, according to the 2014 World Wealth Report by the management consultancy Cap-Gemini, have at least $30 million in investable assets.

A wealth manager’s daily work is similar to that of an architect, in that both design complex, multifunctional structures. The financial architecture created by wealth managers contains assets rather than people and the structures are composed of linked organisational entities, such as trusts, corporations, and foundations. These structures are often means to reduce tax, avoid regulation and control inheritance planning.

U

nlike architects, however, wealth managers also need to maintain the structures that they create.

As laws, financial conditions, and political climates change, so do the strategies needed to manage a client’s assets. Keeping up with all this is no easy feat – and that is exactly where wealth managers come into their own. One manual published by Step explains that their role is to be “part lawyer, part tax adviser, part accountant and part investment adviser all rolled into one”. For international transactions, wealth managers also need to assemble and coordinate a team of advisers. In this sense, wealth managers are more like general contractors: responsible for executing the client’s strategic plan, but reliant on a team of subcontractors for highly specialised parts of the job.

Though the precise details of such complex structures are rarely made public, we can get a sense of them from professional publications. The following is a typical client scenario from one of the Step training manuals: The proposed settlor [client] is a Brazilian national, but has been living in Canada for the last 15 years where he considers his permanent home to be. The trustees are to be a trust institution in the Cayman Islands with a professional protector situated in the Bahamas. It is intended that the trust assets will comprise shares in two underlying companies: the holding company of the settlor’s

Latin American business empire is incorporated as an exempt company in Bermuda; and an IBC [international business corporation] incorporated in [the British Virgin Islands] holding a portfolio of stocks and shares. The discretionary beneficiaries comprise a class of persons who reside throughout Europe and South America.

Three aspects of this scenario are worth noting to illustrate the dizzying complexity of wealth management. The first is the international scope: six countries and their respective laws are implicated in this asset-holding structure, not including the various states in Europe and South America where the people who will benefit financially reside. The wealth manager must coordinate with experts in each of those jurisdictions to keep abreast of changes in tax laws and other regulations. Second, there is a large cast of characters involved, including not just professionals – such as the trustees in the Cayman Islands and the directors of the international business corporation in Bermuda – but also the client and the beneficiaries.

Third, there is the mix of structures, with a trust holding shares in multiple underlying corporations.

This trust-corporation configuration allows assets to be transferred back and forth in what Forbes once characterised as a “shell game extraordinaire”.

Skilful wealth managers can use tools such as trusts, foundations and corporations to thwart the aims of the state almost indefinitely, without breaking any laws.

For some, this is one of the attractions of the profession. Bruce, an American working in Geneva, said that his primary source of job satisfaction was the “intellectual challenge of playing cat and mouse with tax authorities around the world”.

But a much more common reason that wealth managers give for enjoying their job is that it is not just intellectually challenging, but emotionally fulfilling. As Sebastian, an Englishman based in Hong Kong, put it: “It’s not like being an investment banker, where you’re just filing papers for a company you care nothing about … Even if the clients are spoiled brats, and some of them really are, your work helps keep families together.” This was a common refrain: almost every participant in the study mentioned “helping families” as a major source of satisfaction.

Many wealth managers’ clients invite them to attend family weddings, to take holidays with them, and even to sit by their deathbed. A few members of the profession talked of crying at their desks after learning that one of their clients had died. As Sherman, the man I spoke to in the British Virgin Islands, told me, this intimacy with clients’ lives gives a depth to his practice that is unlike his previous experience in banking: “It’s very emotional. It’s very real.”

The quasi-familial role does have some downsides.

The position of trust and intimacy that they

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WEALTH MANAGERS

develop with clients often makes wealth managers witness some of the worst aspects of family life. Many mentioned their distress at having to help clients disinherit their children and spouses.

In some cases, the fortune that holds the family together may also destroy it. A Step Journal article from 2009 noted that in addition to the threats that creditors and tax authorities pose to a family’s wealth, “the ‘enemy within’ needs to be considered. Putting it bluntly: how can you stop the family from pushing the self-destruct button?”

Nadia, who works in Panama City, said with tears in her eyes that over the past 30 years of her career, “I have watched families tear themselves apart over money. Tear themselves apart.” Several mentioned their discomfort in abetting deceptions and betrayals of clients’ family members. Alistair, in the Cayman Islands, said, “We may have a client with a mistress and children, who he wants to provide for, and it all has to be kept totally private from the wife. We have to just put up and shut up.”

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hen it comes to families, the particular responsibilities of wealth managers vary from region to region. On the Arabian Peninsula, they are now routinely asked to mitigate the disadvantages that Islamic law imposes on the inheritance rights of daughters. Since sharia also tightly limits testamentary freedom – the degree to which individuals can choose how their assets are distributed after their death – those who wish their daughters to have an equal share of the family fortune must find offshore alternatives.

Elaine explained that her clients are increasingly turning to her for workarounds: “Arabs are getting their daughters educated, and they’re trying to protect them, since they’re taking over family businesses, sitting on boards of directors – in Kuwait they’re sitting in parliament. Typically, you’ll see sheikhas not walking behind their husbands, like before, but walking with their husbands, holding hands. So fathers are changing their estate planning: they’re creating trusts and taking out life insurance, which is kind of haram in Islam, but they do it because their sons are going to get the family business under sharia law, and they want their daughters to have an equal share.”

Within the world of wealth management, being obliged to honour debts, pay the costs of government, and otherwise obey the laws of the land are often seen as offences to liberty. One training textbook describes the claims of creditors as “risks”, rather than obligations that borrowers take on voluntarily. Other threats include the legal system itself, regulation and, of course, taxation.

“We may have a client with a mistress who he wants to provide for, and it all has to be kept private”

The desire to escape these obligations explains the popularity of offshore financial schemes. In Treasure Islands, his study of offshore financial centres, Nicholas Shaxson describes this as a world of “members of ancient continental European aristocracies, fanatical supporters of American libertarian writer Ayn Rand, members of the world’s intelligence services, global criminals, British public schoolboys, assorted lords and ladies and bankers galore. Its bugbears are government, laws and taxes, and its slogan is freedom”.

The economist Gabriel Zucman has argued that the offshore financial system has grown to the point that it calls into question the future of national sovereignty. His argument is based primarily on tax avoidance, which he calls “theft pure and simple”. By allowing taxpayers to steal from their governments to the tune of $200 billion in worldwide lost tax revenue each year, he argues, wealth managers dramatically undermine the power of the state.

Luxembourg, where nearly half the country’s production benefits foreign individuals and organisations, is more like a free-trade zone than a country. Others have made a similar point about Jersey: thanks to the economic and political dominance of wealth management, it is no longer really a sovereign state in any meaningful sense.

In any ordinary sense of the term, the journalist Oliver Bullough has written, Jersey “is not a country”, rather, it is “45 square miles of selfgoverning ambiguity”.

With offshore, the wealthy, and the elite professionals who serve them, have created a kind of parallel world of selective lawlessness: selective in that the super-rich can continue to enjoy the benefits of laws that suit their interests while ignoring laws that inconvenience them. This parallel world operates largely unnoticed, except when it contributes to throwing the world that the rest us inhabit into chaos, as it did in the 2008 financial crisis.

Some might argue that it was ever thus. But the problem has grown to an extent that was previously almost unimaginable. The mobility of wealth and its owners, coupled with the legal and financial skill of wealth managers, makes it all too easy to violate the spirit of laws while adhering to them formally.

By now, it is abundantly clear that direct efforts to curtail the privileges of the super-rich have proven ineffective. If political leaders are interested in making elites pay their fair share of tax and submit to the rule of law, they should perhaps shift their attention from those who possess vast wealth and onto the people who serve them.

This essay is adapted from Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers And The One Percent, published by

Harvard University Press

SPORTS BUSINESS

SHOW ME

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Babe Ruth

Serena Williams

Babe Ruth could be the original sporting superstar. A man who knew the value of his name, and used it.

Serena Williams has made the world No 1 spot her own, and her global marketability is second to none.

Endorsement power���������������������56 Global appeal ����������������������������������60 Business acumen ����������������������������63 Cool points ��������������������������������������75

Endorsement power���������������������95 Global appeal ����������������������������������98 Business acumen ����������������������������88 Cool points ��������������������������������������65

How modern athletes went from being well-paid young people who were good at running or playing with balls into wealth-generating machines.

SPORTS BUSINESS

Arnold Palmer

Cristiano Ronaldo

Arnold Palmer is a founding father of the sports brand. Even posthumously his name makes the big bucks.

Cristiano Ronaldo is the poster child for the modern-day superstar. His name adds millions to any brand.

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Endorsement power���������������������95 Global appeal ����������������������������������90 Business acumen ����������������������������75 Cool points ��������������������������������������80

THE MONEY Alan Tyres

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SPORTS BUSINESS

A

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rnold Palmer is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers ever, and the man who made his sport globally popular.

He was also the first athlete to build a business empire. Athletes from Cristiano Ronaldo to Maria Sharapova owe him a huge debt.

Palmer was the first sportsperson to truly monetise his fame and athletic gifts. He was also the first to make a fortune away from the actual arena of his sport. Many sportspeople have tried to emulate him, some have succeeded, others have failed. This is the story of how athletes went from being well-paid young people who were good at running, jumping or playing with balls, into wealth-generating machines of which their on-field prowess is just a part.

Arnold Palmer wasn’t the first wealthy sportsman: back in the 1920s and 1930s, Babe Ruth was the idol of every boy in America, and he was paid good money for it. In 1930, one reporter expressed shock that Ruth earned more (US$80,000) than the president of the United States. “Why not?” replied Ruth. “I had a better year than he did.” A charismatic, larger-than-

Arnold Palmer was the first sportsperson to truly monetise his fame and athletic gifts

life figure who was generous and great with kids, he pioneered sporting endorsements, lending his name to products as diverse as Babe Ruth Underwear and Ruth’s Home Run Chocolate. It was a simpler time, perhaps, and nobody was bothered to look too deeply into what the New York Yankees man actually had to do with the undergarments beyond lending his name to them for a tasty fee.

The Babe was also an early adopter of the ghostwritten column, a format that has been a blight on sports reporting ever since. These articles see a journalist tasked with turning the athlete’s often bland or boring “Well, obviously, the boys done great” comments into something approaching a coherent and interesting story and then sticking the player’s name on the top. For the athlete, nice work for a few seconds’ chat on the phone or on the way out of the locker-room, usually less fun for the writer and much more importantly, for the reader. Without Ruth, could England’s Wayne Rooney have signed a five million-pound, five-book deal before his 21st birthday? Thanks for that, Babe Ruth. The Rooney book deal, incidentally, was a terrible blunder:

SPORTS BUSINESS

it turned out that the public appetite for Wayne Rooney: My Story So Far and the rest was not a seven-figure one. Baths were taken. The bottom has fallen out of the autobiography market in any but exceptional cases, and publishing industry insiders report that even six-figure sterling deals are now regarded as huge gambles where they were once chickenfeed for big names. It seems that Wayne, blameless though he himself has been, killed that golden goose as sure as his increasingly ponderous play on the ball kills off an England attack.

When Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens player, was caught on security tape knocking his girlfriend unconscious, he lost deals worth millions Aside from sporting genius and personal magnetism, Babe Ruth had one other key advantage: he lived in an era where a person’s private life was considered private. A legendary carouser, womaniser and fatherer of illegitimate children, his personal affairs would not have stood up to much scrutiny in the moralising press of that age or any other.

How things have changed. When Tiger Woods’ extramarital naughtiness emerged, his endorsement

earnings took a US$22 million hit between 2009 and 2010. That must have hurt almost as much as having his car hit with a golf club.

The Babe’s bottom line was unaffected by his eye for a chorus line, but that’s not been the case for many of his successors. Corporate partners want a marketable star with a clean image, and in today’s world of hyper-scrutiny and mobile phone cameras turning billions into citizen journalists, or snoopers, depending on your point of view, there are a lot of ways for young, rich stars to trip up.

Among the strangest was when swimming great Michael Phelps was snapped smoking a bong at a party a few months after his 2008 Olympic glory, which caused him to be dropped by his sponsor Kellogg’s. “Michael’s most recent behaviour is not consistent with the image of Kellogg,” said a spokeswoman. And they make breakfast cereal: it’s hardly like the world looks to them for moral leadership. Phelps wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last, sportsperson to hit themselves in the wallet due to foolish behaviour or remarks.

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he NFL and Major League Baseball are both currently fighting the perception that they have been soft on players who have been involved in domestic violence and, across many sports, sponsors have often been quicker to censure than the governing bodies themselves.

When Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens player, was caught on security tape knocking his girlfriend unconscious, he lost deals worth millions with Nike, Modell’s and EA Sports. He wasn’t allowed to play for the Ravens for an entire two games. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell later admitted that the League “didn’t get it right” in terms of the sanction handed out to Rice.

Bad behaviour has always seen businesses get rid of their sporting spokespeople since Ben Hur lost a lucrative sandal endorsement for dangerous chariot driving, although there is often a cynicism about it on the part of the sponsoring company. In today’s online culture of instant outrage, people, it seems, want people sacked all the time, and companies feel that there is no mileage in standing by their man or woman. Indeed, the recent case of Maria Sharapova having her doping ban reduced was instructive: many people were inflamed that Head tennis rackets tweeted their support for their athlete. “We stood with Maria”, the brand trumpeted, after she had the ban cut for a failed drug test from two years to 15 months. As heroic triumphs by athletes against injustice go, it was hardly Jackie Robinson breaking the colour bar or Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics.

Maria got lucky. The feeling persists that sporting sponsors sometimes use a scandal as a handy

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excuse to divest themselves of a depreciating asset.

Brilliant young athletes live in a bubble and can hardly be blamed for having a simplistic worldview: wealthy beyond reason, pumped up, and told they are the greatest thing since sliced bread by their hangers on, they are going to make mistakes. What you don’t want, as a sponsor, is to be paying out a fortune to someone who is no longer box office. A blunder or scandal can be a cost-effective way of getting rid of a dead weight, and has the added advantage of making the corporation sound virtuous.

Sponsorship is still a nice little earner, no doubt about it. Cristiano Ronaldo does quite well from Real Madrid, bringing home about US$56 million a year from the Bernabeu. But CR7, a man so vain he has even trademarked his own initials, tops up that basic with promotional work for Nike, Tag Heuer, Armani, Konami, Castrol, Gucci, and even a strange sort of advertorial thing that is currently on television where he has an electronic vibrating gizmo strapped around his washboard stomach. The device apparently allows you to have abs like Ronaldo, without all that tedious business like having to be in the gym eight days a week. A true titan of the gig economy, Ronaldo is available for work, anytime, anyplace, anywhere and is snaffling about US$32 million a year in doing so without having to put this boots on. The days of a sportsman getting a couple of days pay for advertising aftershave have gone, at least for those in the sporting stratosphere like Ronaldo, whose face (and stomach) are recognisable anywhere on the planet.

And it is a global game these days: Ronaldo, for instance, has plans to be big in Asia. Of course he does. And so Singapore billionaire Peter Lim’s Mint Media purchased Ronaldo’s image rights in the territory for US$ 40 million on a six-year project. It

The days of a sportsman getting a couple of days pay for advertising aftershave have gone

all feels a long way from the days when England’s World Cup-winning Bobby Moore did adverts for pubs. Not any specific pub, or even a chain. Just adverts from a strange sort of pub marketing board organisation, to get people to… go to the pub.

The key to putting together major bank as a sportsperson is the true lesson that Arnold Palmer taught: you want to make income that is not dependent on your sporting performance. Palmer did not just make money playing golf or advertising products: he owned the means of production, as it were, moving from labour to capital. He owned the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando Florida, and that became a PGA tour venue for the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

He also founded the television station The Golf Channel and was an early spotter of the riches to be made from luxury sports like golf in Asia. He began designing golf courses, and more than 300 eventually bore his name: a true empire of greens and fairways, and all of this without relying on the vagaries of form and fitness, or having to kowtow to corporates.

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e also took legal recourse to shore up another vital part of the former sports star’s revenue stream when he attempted to stop the unauthorised sale of memorabilia bearing copies of his signature, although this was a rare failure. He even had a soft drinks arm, selling the beverage that came to be known as the Arnold Palmer: sweetened ice tea mixed with lemonade. All told, he built up wealth estimated at US$700 million. Not bad for a career that began helping out his dad, a greenskeeper in a golf course in working class Pennsylvania.

SPORTS BUSINESS

Another sportsperson who understood the virtue of diversification was heavyweight boxing great George Foreman. He did well enough out of boxing, but is now more famous for bringing grilled cheese sandwiches to a wider audience than for the ferocious hooks with which he used to pummel the ribs of opponents including Muhammad Ali. George’s venture into the decidedly humdrum world of the toasted sandwich maker was one of the most surprising merchandising hits of the last few years.

When asked, “Estimates are that you earned in excess of US$200 million on the grill. True?” He answered: “Much more. There were months I was being paid US$8 million per month.”

They were decent products (I’ve had three, but they needed replacing after a while when the anti-stick stuff started to go, so maybe that is even further evidence of George’s genius: built-in obsolesce) but who would ever have thought that they’d be worth that much? He may have come off

Foreman did well enough out of boxing, but is now more famous for bringing grilled cheese sandwiches to a wider audience

second best in the Rumble In The Jungle, but in the world of the celebrity-endorsed kitchen appliances, there is but one true King.

But not all heavyweight greats have been as shrewd or successful as Foreman. One of his successors, Mike Tyson, was styled as the Baddest Man On The Planet during his 1980s reign of terror in the ring. He was also, sadly, the baddest man imaginable when it came to managing his finances: he made US$400 million from his career in the ring, but had to declare bankruptcy even before he retired. Sadly, a penchant for buying Siberian tigers, and being in business with Don King, proved to be a one-two knockout combo for Iron Mike.

The other great sporting hero of the 1980s, Argentine legend Diego Maradona, was named one of two footballers of the century along with Pele.

The Brazilian has proven an absolute master of the post-career payday, advertising everything up to and including Viagra. Diego has fared less well: despite being the subject of not one but two transfer record-breaking bids in his career, he has had serious financial problems that even coaching gigs paying millions a year have been unable to fix. The Italian government still want huge sums out of him in backtaxes from his time as a Napoli player.

So what lessons can players learn from Arnold and other successful sportspeople? Try to get some income away from the actual sport. Take care of your image carefully. Get someone who you can trust to manage your money for you. And try not to do anything too stupid, especially if there are cameras around. It can prove very costly indeed.

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MEDICAL TOURISM

A serious operation 64

Charlie Carver

Roui Francisco

MEDICAL TOURISM

The launch earlier this year of Dubai Health Experience, a website and mobile app providing comprehensive information for potential medical tourists, marked the beginning of the second phase of the medical tourism strategy the Dubai Health Authority launched in 2014. But how much progress has the department made towards its goal of making Dubai a world-class destination for medical tourism?

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n March 2014, the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) launched its two-phase medical tourism strategy – 2014 to 2016 and 2016 to 2020 – stating its aim to become a global hub for medical tourism within six years. Its objectives were to be the fastest growing medical tourism destination in the world; to be rated the top medical tourism destination in the region and ultimately one of the top 10 in the world; to develop a healthcare industry to compete with the best; and to contribute to the economic development of Dubai. The department said it had been set the challenge of attracting 500,000 international medical tourists by 2020 – a target that, if achieved, would contribute Dhs2.6 billion to the Dubai economy.

According to the DHA’s own figures, 630,833 medical tourists visited Dubai in 2015 – 53 per cent from the domestic market (the UAE) and 47 per cent, almost 300,000, from the international market, which generated Dhs1.5 billion in revenues. In 2013, the figure was 120,000; it climbed to 135,000 in 2014. The DHA offered an uncharacteristically conservative projection of 170,000 for 2016 – an estimate that, given the high number of international medical tourists in 2015, is likely to be exceeded by a significant amount.

From the numbers it seems that the first phase of the strategy has worked. Dubai was also ranked 16th in the 2016 Medical Tourism Index (MTI), making it the highest ranked destination in the MENA region. Produced by International Healthcare Research Center (IHRC), a US-based not-for-profit research centre, the MTI looks at 41 destinations from the Middle East, Asia, Americas, Africa and Europe, taking into consideration a destination’s global profile as a medical tourism destination both in the media and with 4,000 prospective medical tourism patients and 394 members from the Medical Tourism Association (MTA).

“We did not have a medical tourism strategy per se before 2014.

It was just sporadic activity from the private sector,” says Linda Abdullah Ali Ruhi, head of DHA’s Medical Tourism Office. “In 2013, when we took over the formulation of the medical tourism strategy, we did market research – including patient questionnaires.

Patients said, for example, that they didn’t know what to do if they had a medical complaint or where to find information about the medical facilities and doctors in Dubai, and that would put them off thinking of Dubai as a destination for medical tourism. We took these negatives and we addressed them.”

In April 2016, the DHA launched the Dubai Health Experience, a website and mobile app designed as a one-stop-shop for potential medical tourists. Dubai Health Experience users will find the DHA’s solutions to the concerns highlighted in the patient survey: a charter of patient rights and responsibilities; clear information about the medical complaints procedure; and the inbound travel insurance scheme the DHA developed in partnership with NEXtCARE and Alliance Insurance. Dubai Health Experience also features the DXH Group, a directory of 32 private hospitals and clinics that have been “scrutinised and vetted” and deemed to offer the highest level of medical treatment; information on travelling to Dubai; and a range of bespoke medical tourism packages, with prices.

Ali Ruhi, who describes the launch of Dubai Health Experience as the bridge between phases one and two of the medical tourism strategy, says that addressing patient concerns have helped build trust.

Keith Pollard is CEO of Intuition Communication, the company responsible for the International Medical Travel Journal website and newsletter, and other medical tourism websites including Treatment Abroad, Medical Tourism Reviews and DoctorInternet. “Dubai has come late to the medical tourism market,” he says “But the benefit is that it has been able to learn from the mistakes made by other ‘wannabe’ medical tourism destinations. Too many market hopefuls have launched a medical tourism initiative without ensuring that the product they are selling is ‘good to go’.” Hence some countries have earned a bad reputation for their handling of medical travellers though poor licensing of clinics and practitioners, and the failure to ensure appropriate patient support and follow-up in the home country. In ensuring that there is strict regulation of medical tourism activity is ahead of the game. As is the intention to build in a medical tourism insurance plan that will give patients the confidence to put their trust in Dubai.”

Besides addressing patient concerns in order to build trust, phase one has also involved creating awareness of Dubai’s medical tourism offering in target markets such as the GCC, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Angola, Russia, CIS and the UK; building a relationship with the private providers that make up the bulk of the Dubai health sector; and focusing on the provision of the following treatments: orthopaedics and sports medicine; plastic surgery; ophthalmology; dental procedures; dermatology and skin care; aesthetic practices and surgeries; preventive health check-ups; and wellness.

“To start off, we said, ‘What are we good at? What services are we comfortable with promoting?’ We decided to promote elective procedures,” explains Ali Ruhi, adding that the

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MEDICAL TOURISM

DHA is constantly re-evaluating, looking at what new services it can promote. She highlights IVF as an example of a treatment that has become popular since the launch of the strategy in 2014.

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he DHA’s main focus in phase two will be the quality of the treatment and service healthcare providers are offering. Ali Ruhi says that although the DXH Group facilities conform to strict criteria, the current evaluation only offers a 180˚ view. Her department is currently working on introducing a clinical performance rating and producing a patient safety index to offer potential patients a comprehensive 360˚ view of each healthcare provider. Ali Ruhi estimates this process will take 18 to 21 months, adding that it is part of the DHA’s aim to build Dubai’s healthcare facilities into world-class “centres of excellence”.

Ali Ruhi admits that the DHA is piggybacking on Dubai’s reputation as a tourist destination, but its success in implementing phase one is already enhancing the city’s reputation as a medical tourism destination in its own right. London’s King’s College Hospital will open its first branch outside the UK in Dubai in 2018. Ali Ruhi says the arrival of such a respected institution in Dubai will lend the DHA’s efforts credibility.

Laila Al Jassmi is the founder and CEO of Dubai-based medical tourism and healthcare consultancy Health Beyond Borders. Prior to going into business for herself in 2013, she worked for the DHA for 23 years. From 2010 to 2013 she was CEO of the Health Policy and Strategy Sector, and developed and led the medical tourism initiative to promote Dubai as a destination for medical tourism the DHA launched in 2012 – the precursor to the strategy launched in 2014 and led by Dr Layla Mohamed Al Marzouqi..

Al Jassmi says it will be a challenge for the DHA to hit its target of 500,000 international medical tourists by 2020 but that Dubai is well placed to become a leading destination for medical tourism thanks to its geographical location, between Europe and Southeast Asia; its political and economic stability; its tourism infrastructure, including Emirates airline; the number of internationally accredited healthcare facilities and healthcare facilities with international partnerships; the multicultural social fabric and absence of a language barrier; and the fact that it is an attractive city for investors.

“There aren’t many players in the MENA region when it comes to the medical tourism market,” says Al Jassmi, listing Jordan, Tunisia, Turkey and Lebanon as possible competition for Dubai. “Each country provides different services,” she adds, explaining

“The whole medical tourism thing is not just about healthcare, it is also about hospitality”

that Jordan, for example, is well-known for taking care of patients injured in war zones, its expertise in treating mental health issues and its King Hussein Cancer Center. Tunisia, she says, focuses cardiac surgery, orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery and benefits from the political situation and poor quality of healthcare in neighbouring Algeria. Lebanon is popular with those seeking aesthetic procedures.

In a market where specialisation is key, the DHA has done well to outline Dubai’s unique offering, says Al Jassmi. “The government must look into creating very competitive packages for medical tourists – not just health services but also travel and hospitality.,” she adds. “ The whole medical tourism phenomena is not just about healthcare, it is also about hospitality.

This is where countries like Jordan and Turkey have been very successful; they have combined these elements. We are blessed, of course, that we have the tourism infrastructure. Dubai is not looking to attract low-income patients because we have a highly developed healthcare infrastructure, very highquality healthcare providers.”

The DHA’s efforts have definitely influenced the city’s healthcare providers, according to Al Jassmi.

“It has broadened the perspective of the health care providers and encouraged them to play more of a role in boosting medical tourism,” she says. “Some of them have even gone to [destinations such as] Africa to market their healthcare services.”

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l Jassmi welcomes any efforts by the DHA to measure the quality of Dubai’s hospitals and clinics. “If the Dubai Health Authority introduces a rating system it will absolutely help,” she says. Herself recognising patients’ desire for quality assurance, Al Jassmi has partnered with the German medical tourism certification body Temos, which to date has certified three Dubai hospitals, including Saudi German Hospital Dubai.

Dr Reem Osman, CEO of Saudi German Hospital Dubai, is also positive about the idea of a rating system for healthcare providers. “It will be good for the hospitals because it presents a challenge,” she says. “We will have to prove ourselves when it comes to the standard of service. It will be good for the patients because they can judge which is the best hospital for them.”

“It is a competitive market,” she adds. “We are always looking for opportunities to improve.”

Saudi German Hospital Dubai opened in 2012, and Dr Osman says that it was part of its strategy from the beginning to focus not only on the UAE

“The government has committed to patient care and safety, which is the real heart of it”

market but also on the wider GCC region and beyond. She estimates that currently 10 per cent of the hospitals patients travel from outside the UAE, with the majority coming from the GCC and Africa; the hospital is in the process of exploring new markets in the hope of doubling that percentage.

Dr Osman agrees that Dubai is well place to become a medical tourism hub, singling out for praise the ease of obtaining a medical tourism visa for Dubai. Dubai offers a 90-day renewable medical tourism visa that patients can apply for through the medical facility in which they choose to be treated.

Operating in more than 120 countries, WhatClinic.com is one of the biggest private healthcare directory sites in the world and is focused on many of the elective surgeries that the DHA is keen to promote.

In December 2015, WhatClinic.com reported that over the previous year enquiries about elective cosmetic procedures for the UAE had increased by 106 per cent, while international enquiries had increased by 135 per cent.

Emily Ross, Director of Marketing and Communications for WhatClinic.com, says that the increase in enquiries about Dubai coincided with the increase in the investment the government was putting into promoting Dubai as a destination for medical tourism. Spotting the UAE’s potential, the company’s founder and CEO, Caelen King, travelled to the Emirates and visited a number of clinics to get a handle on the market, and WhatClinic.com subsequently increased the number of UAE clinics listed on the site from 400 to 800.

“The general consensus from our account management team who deal with clinics in the UAE on a day-to-day basis is that the clinics are very patient-centric, multilingual, responsive,” says Ross.

Ross admits that Dubai is not the only place that has made promoting itself as a destination for medical tourism a priority; she estimates that 50 national governments have pledged to make medical tourism part of their country’s offering.

“For Dubai it’s more than just marketing,” she adds. “The government has committed to patient care and patient safety, which is the real heart of it.

That’s what’s going to make it work.”

“It can be difficult for patients to access reliable information about standards of care. We wish everyone was as conscientious as the Dubai Health Authority, because when it comes to their licensing and standards they are very comprehensive. It’s very reassuring if you’re flying in for treatment to have an organisation like that committed to patient safety. A rating system [like the one the DHA is talking about] that is clear and transparent is certainly going to benefit consumers.”

LIVING / HOTEL

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Anantara Kihavah Shipwrecked chic is the vibe on this tiny Maldivian island where Salt, Slumber and Star Gurus are par for the course and privacy is priceless

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Baa Atoll, Maldives

PRICE From $1,054 per night

anantarakihavah. com

 EK

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he Maldives is a bucket list destination in and of itself, but for those looking to make a serious dent in the travel budget, it’s also the kind of destination where a guest can drop several hundred thousand dollars in a week.

Such was the case for a Russian businessman who decamped to luxury resort Anantara Kihavah Maldives Villas earlier this year, arriving on his private yacht. Despite having enough space on board to host an Oscars after-party, he booked one of the resort’s premium multiroomed residences and enjoyed some of the most sophisticated food and beverage offerings available anywhere in the world.

And he’s not alone; members of various royal families have been in residence here. As have celebrities, sports stars and Fortune 500 billionaires. Recently, Brazilian professional footballer Ramires checked in and clocked out, fresh from his somewhat controversial season for Chinese club Jiangsu Suning. It’s the kind of place where high-profile people like to go to get lost.

Given almost all fresh produce has to be imported to the Maldives, it’s a testimony to their focus on premium gastronomy and beverage that the resort built the world’s largest underwater

“The cellar includes vintage bottles of Pétrus and Chateau Margaux, as well as a staggeringly rare bottle of Madeira Terrantez”

cellar. Engineered at a cost of $5 million, it was designed primarily to maintain the extensive wine collection in optimal environmental conditions and, secondly, to provide a unique glass-walled dining space so guests can enjoy a silver service gourmet experience surrounded by reef sharks and tropical fish.

Sea – one of several venues named after their connection to natural elements that include Fire, Salt and Sky – houses the most awarded wine cellar in the Maldives, having received several Wine Spectator Awards Of Excellence. The cellar includes vintage bottles of Pétrus and Chateau Margaux, as well as a staggeringly rare

Words: Gina Johnson

ANANTARA KIHAVA, MALDIVES

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bottle of Madeira Terrantez and, due to the virtual extinction of Terrantez grapevines in the late 1800s, one of only two in the world.

It will set you back $12,120.

The resident Wine Guru – brandspeak for sommelier – is a humble yet highly regarded expert, as are his counterparts, respectively known as Salt, Slumber and Star Gurus. It’s all part of the shipwrecked luxury shtick.

Arriving in the Maldives is a dreamseekers’ experience where guests travelling to the outer atolls, made up of more than 1,000 coral islands swaddled by palm-fringed beaches and peppermint-hued sea, jet in on small seaplanes. The journey to the resort is a 35-minute flight north of Malé.

While ‘doing nothing at all’ is celebrated as a national pastime in the Maldives, here guests can tick off a list of once-in-a-lifetime adventures.

The resort’s house reef, known as The Golden Wall, is considered one of the best dive spots in the world and during their seasonal migration, you can swim, snorkel or freedive with giant manta rays.

The resident marine biologist guides small groups on highly regulated boat trips to the nearby Hanifaru Bay, which is a Unesco Biosphere reserve.

ON THE HOTEL

ARRIVE

Guests arrive by seaplane from Malé.

The journey takes 35 minutes.

EAT

Options include barefoot beach BBQs to authentic Italian, but the underwater dining experience at Sea is sublime.

EXTRA TOUCH

The stargazing and canapé grazing experience from the roof deck of Sky, hosted by the hotel’s resident Sky Guru.

Luxury destinations, particularly those that service the Middle Eastern traveller, are starting to address the growing demand for larger accommodation.

As such, Anantara Kihavah this year unveiled its impressive threebedroom beach pool residence. It can accommodate six adults and six children (or nine adults) with a nightly room rate starting at $8,500.

Designed with Thai, Moroccan and Indian accents in a pavilion-style single level space, there are white-washed walls, a sprawling wooden deck and daybeds that float over the infinity-edged pool that twinkles with fibre-optic lights at night.

For a small island the sense of openair space is resounding. You can indulge in an over-water, spa treatment, gaze up at the Milky Way while enjoying an astronomy session with the resident Star Guru, or watch an old film under the stars at the outdoor cinema. A nice touch given one of the resort’s inspirations comes from a famous line written by American-Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran: “Let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.”

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LIVING / DAVID LAUREN

The Ralph Lauren experience David Lauren says the iconic brand is about contemporary sensibility as well as tradition and heritage

Words: Hynam Kendall

D

avid Lauren laughs and it’s a warm and generous sound rising in volume, a sound to which he lets himself surrender, giving you the impression that he is a man who laughs often. He is also a man, much like his father – the fashion designer Ralph Lauren – with a longstanding reputation for being one of the nicest people in the industry. Not one, but two notable editors coo upon hearing of my impending interview, “Oh, I just love him!” And I understand why when, within minutes of our conversation, he bursts into that infectious laughter, weightless and softly American.

“You know it’s so funny,” Lauren says, “somebody said to me the other day that they were so excited because they went online and they couldn’t believe that they could get this product sent to them the next day, and I was like, ‘Wow! But you could also just walk into a store and get it in five minutes!’ And they said, ‘You know, you’re right. That’s kind of cool!’

And all I could do was laugh out loud because we were standing at a street corner, on the street, and they were going to go inside to buy it online and wait a day for it’s arrival.” A beat. “Not only this, they were so happy to do it!” And he laughs that laugh.

Lauren recently unveiled Ralph Lauren Corporation’s new Ralph Lauren Regent Street flagship store in London, the brand’s first Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store in Europe. The immense 17,561-square-foot space spans three

floors decorated stunningly with antiques, objet d’art and themed areas inspired by iconic New York locations such as Tribeca and Williamsburg. I ask Lauren rather earnestly, with the undeniable power of e-commerce what reason is there now to visit a physical store? “There is simply nothing like immediate gratification,” he

TIMELINE

2000

2000

David joins Ralph Lauren Corp in 2000 to run the company’s internet operations under Ralph Lauren Media

Ralph Lauren launches the luxury industry’s first e-commerce site, an online publication, as well as a web channel

says. “There is nothing like talking to an amazing salesperson and feeling a product and being a part of that culture. We look at it like an experience, like you’re stepping into a movie, the Ralph Lauren movie, or a dream. When you walk into one of our stores you’re not walking into a blank white room, you’re stepping

2007

2009

David orchestrates a number of initiatives spanning the year in celebration of Ralph Lauren’s 40th anniversary

David creates the ‘Make Your Own’ iPhone app for Rugby Ralph Lauren and presents the first-ever, online-only fashion show for the brand

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into another world and all of your senses are excited. The value of that experience of touching and talking and being connected to people will never go away, it is part of the human experience.”

I was interested in Lauren’s views on the need for physical retail space because since his appointment at the brand some 16 years ago, in a then-newly created role focusing on developing an online presence and site for Polo, later encompassing global advertising, marketing and communications, he has been heralded as a champion of the digital revolution. He spearheaded many groundbreaking firsts: the first ever shopable fashion show (for Rugby Ralph Lauren), 24-hour virtual shopping for which Ralph Lauren’s Madison Square Garden shop windows were turned into huge interactive terminals, and most recently at the aforementioned Regent Street store, a Polo Custom shop, the brand’s world first, which allows customers to personalise purchases of polos, oxfords, blazers, baseball caps using docked iPads to select their preferred designs, watching them come to life as oversized 3-D projections before being created on-site. Lauren agrees it is a type of delicate dichotomy, operating in a very modern way with a contemporary sensibility, but also celebrating tradition, rich heritage and that personal, human touch that has worked for Ralph Lauren for the past 50 years. But championing technological advance, he assures, is still very much at the forefront of his vision for the future of the brand. In aside, he tells me of his promotion to the new role of vice chairman and chief innovation officer (news that will be released later that day via industry bible Women’s Wear Daily).

It is a role, he says, that will help him ensure Ralph Lauren continues to be at the digital forefront. “I have grown up in

this company and my job has really been to help my father bring the brand to life in new ways. He creates cinematic stories through his clothing, through ads, the stores, and I help keep the brand relevant, exciting and thoroughly modern.”

When Lauren first saw the potential of the internet, the luxury fashion industry was not online. This was 16 years ago and the web was an extremely different entity to what it is today. People, even from within his own company, were wary of what the internet would do to fashion, to the brand. Lauren, however, believed in this new potentially rich medium so much

so that he embarked on a roadshow, spending months meeting with people to explain why Polo.com (now known as RalphLauren.com) was going to be a benefit to business and an opportunity rather than a threat. Some press outlets took him to task. They didn’t believe the luxury fashion industry belonged in this new space, that the technology wasn’t ready for the stylish experience that fashion demanded. But whilst others were happy to rely solely on magazine spreads for exposure, Lauren foresaw that a website could potentially house thousands of curated images, videos and articles.

2010

April 2011

October 2013

October 2013

Ralph Lauren introduces a childrenswear collection with an online shoppable storybook called The RL Gang: An Absolutely Awesome School Adventure

David leads a series of opening events in support of the Ralph Lauren car exhibition, L’Arte de Automobile, at Les Artes Decoratifs in Paris

Ralph Lauren celebrates his underwriting of the restoration of the amphitheater of the École des Beaux-Arts – and to present his first-ever runway show in Paris

David presents The Dog Walk, a 3-D platform showcasing the fall 2013 accessories collection in collaboration with the American Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals

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“My father creates cinematic stories through his clothing, the ads, the stores, and I help keep the brand relevant, exciting and thoroughly modern”

“And then it changed,” says Lauren. “The world changed. They woke up. Today it’s so hard to believe there was a time before.

But we were there from the beginning.”

In 2008 Polo Ralph Lauren unveiled a mobile commerce site that enabled consumers to purchase products through their phone. By 2009 Polo Ralph Lauren set the industry standard for digital innovation with the Collection iPhone App, online fashion shows and shop-able videos. Again, they were one of the first.

“Everyone thought that beauty needed space, that you couldn’t shrink down the beauty to fit on a mobile phone,” Lauren

says. “But by getting there first we learned a lot about how to do it and get it right because we had the time to experiment.”

Today almost every luxury brand is very interested in the advances of technology and many companies have set up innovation departments specifically to master this medium. As a result, there’s a lot more competition now, a lot more brands living in these new spaces and having credible understanding of how to apply the technology. Lauren agrees, but doesn’t necessarily see it as a threat. “I would say it’s a wonderful industry of people looking to inspire each other,” he says. “And excite each other. It’s true that other brands are starting to move into the world of technology, but I think that it’s exciting. It makes the change happen faster.”

The technology that currently excites Lauren is that of wearable tech. Two years ago the company introduced ‘The Ricky Bag With Light’, their iconic Ricky bag updated to feature a USB port to charge mobile phones and a rechargeable battery that powered an internal LED light (inspired by that familiar, frantic rummage for paraphernalia, usually aided by one’s mobile phone torch function). They then introduced Polo Tech, unveiled on the opening day of the 2014 US Open, with ball boys as well as Marcos Giron, the No 1 singles player in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, wearing Polo Tech Shirts. “In the future I fully believe that people will be looking at clothing differently, that clothes will be different,” says Lauren. “Just as the Apple watch changed the way that we looked at watches, the Tech shirt has already begun to have an influence. It’s incredible that

now your clothing can measure all your basic biorhythms. And we also created a new technology that never existed before called Adaptive Workouts, which adapts to your level of fitness. This means that if you and a friend are working out with the same shirt, you might be given different workouts, and that’s ground-breaking, not only for clothing but for the whole way in which we look at lifestyle.”

In regards to the clothes themselves, Lauren says: “If you’re too in fashion you’ll fall out of fashion.” I ask if accessible clothes (such as the polo shirts, suiting and sports coats Ralph Lauren has popularised and is so celebrated for) are in fact the backbone of the fashion industry, rather than the antithesis, as some might say. “Look, there are certain brands that make clothes that you buy and you’re very excited about them,” Lauren says, “but in six months you wonder how you’ll ever wear that piece again. It’s exciting in the moment because it’s something that feels on trend or fun.

We have what a lot of brands do not have; we have people who have been buying our brand for 50 years. And that’s because it’s a great investment, we aren’t that brand that dates instantly. That’s not our job.

I say it’s a somewhat unique position for a brand to be in where they reach customers of all ages. Lauren agrees. “We make clothing for people who are looking for something sporty, something serious, something for the weekend and something for a black tie event. We have customers that have been coming to us for five decades, to dress them for every event as they grow. What we do,” he says, “is dress people for their lives.”

September 2014

2014

2015

September 2016

Ralph Lauren’s new Polo line for women is unveiled at the 2015 New York Fashion Week

Forbes lists David as the second most influential chief marketing officer in the world

To celebrate the launch of Polo Sport, Ralph Lauren launches interactive holographic windows at its flagship on New York’s 5th Avenue

David unveils Ralph Lauren’s new flagship store in London, the brand’s first Polo Ralph Lauren flagship store in Europe

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What to pack ...for winter weather in London, UK, and beyond

Average temp

7°c

Paris Istanbul Vienna Copenhagen

ALSO WEAR IN...

5 °C 8 °C 5 °C 5 °C

DECEMBER

LONDON

Chance of rain: 17%

ADDITIONAL INFO

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THE WOLSELEY London in the winter, perhaps more than any other time of the year, requires a good breakfast to get you going, and the place for that is the Wolseley.

Formerly the space was used as a car showroom, but the ornate details, tiled floors and interior decor lend themselves to a setting of grandeur

for a big breakfast. Porridge is on the menu and is ideal winter food, but the eggs Benedict here has become the stuff of ledgend and is regarded as the specialty of the house. Go with that, and coffee, and linger for a long, easy start to a cold London day.

The Wolseley, 160 Piccadilly, St James’s, London W1J 9EB

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Kiehl’s moisturiser $45

Dolce and Gabbana leathercovered phone charger $345

YStudio wood and brass pen case $125

Brioni Eau de Toilette $275

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79 1. Quilted Ripstop Down Jacket $475 2. Prada ribbed wool beanie $195 3. Zegna cashmere and silk scarf $845 4. Burberry cashmere-lined gloves $375 5. Mulberry holdall $1,000

LIVING / STYLE

What to pack ...for winter weather in Warsaw, Poland, and beyond

Average temp

3°c

Budapest Milan Zurich Paris

ALSO WEAR IN...

4 °C 8 °C 4 °C 7 °C

DECEMBER

WARSAW

Chance of rain: 15%

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HOTEL BRISTOL Built in 1901, the art deco–style building has had several major upgrades. Finally, after the fall of Communism in 1989, it was restored to its original glory. It is now one of the best places to stay in the capital.

The modern five-star property run by the Starwood group has excellent

restaurants and bars. Set on the main shopping area of the city, it’s near the 14th-century Royal Castle museum, and the theatre and sports fields at the Palace Of Culture And Science. There’s no other hotel in the city that can match its mix of quality service and facilities nor historical significance.

Krakowskie Przedmiescie 42/44, Warsaw

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1. Moncler coat $4,040 2. Saint Laurent leather trousers $3,940 3. Gucci wool jumper $1290 4. Gucci wool beanie $655 5. Isabel Marant chain trimmed suede boots $1,635

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81 Klorane relaxing eye patches x 7 $24

Alexander McQueen earings $745

Dolce and Gabanna passport cover $295

Byredo Reine de Nuit extrait de parfum $550

DECEMBER ISSUE 132

LIVING / INVESTMENT

MB&F Horological Machine N°8 – Can-Am A piece of mechanical art you can wear

1

Three-dimensional horological engine conceived and developed by MB&F from a Girard-Perregaux base calibre

4

Its transparency backlights the time displays, making them more legible by day. Light also charges the Super-LumiNova numerals on the hour and minute discs for maximum legibility by night

2

Can-Am inspired roll bars are milled from solid blocks of grade5 titanium and then meticulously handpolished to gleam like tubular mirrors

5

Designed for drivers, there’s no need to lift your wrist from the steering wheel to read the display

3

Bi-directional jumping hours and trailing minutes displayed by two optical prisms that both reflect and magnify

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Hand-stitched alligator strap in marine blue with folding buckle in matching case material

B&F have, for years now, created some of the most technically interesting watches as well as mechanical objects that have helped them stand out from a crowded field in the watch industry. The eighth in their series of machines was designed by MB&F founder Maximilian Büsser – now a Dubai resident – who claims that he always wanted to be a car designer and the HM8 is the next best thing. The MB&F Machine range comprises little pieces of mechanical art; that the eighth in the series is wearable and practical makes it really stand out. The Canadian-American Challenge Cup, Can-Am for short, was a sports car racing series running from 1966 to 1987. Class restrictions in the Can-Am were minimal and allowed for unlimited engine sizes, turbocharging, supercharging, and unrestricted aerodynamics. This all led to the development of pioneering technology in many fields and seems a fitting source of inspiration for one of the most innovative watchmakers around today. The watch comes in both 18k white gold/titanium and 18k red gold/titanium and retails for around $82,000.

OPEN THE NOW

#MOETMOMENT

Enjoy responsibly - www.moet.com

LIVING / GIN

The gin renaissance

I 84

t seems hard to believe, but there was a time when gin was one of the most uncool drinks on the planet.

In the 1970s and ’80s, it was seen as tired and old fashioned, retired colonels, golf-club bars, G&T, ice and a slice. But gin is now the most innovative spirit out there, with new bottlings from all corners of the globe served in the coolest bars, and always with that air of sophistication the likes of vodka will never attain.

How did this happen? Very simply: the rise of bar culture. Cocktails had never really gone away since their advent in the early 20th century, but their image suffered greatly in those pre-Millennium years – lurid-coloured drinks, flair bartending, Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and so on – and it wasn’t until the 2000s that mixed drinks

started to be cool again. Vodka was the early star, thanks to Grey Goose and Ciroc, but gin quickly moved into the spotlight with the likes of Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire, and many more since.

The big guns paved the way for smallscale producers to launch their own gins.

The beauty is that distillers start with a blank canvas (in this case, neutral grain spirit) and have the freedom to take their gin in any direction they like, by redistilling it with ‘botanicals’ – natural ingredients that add subtle nuances.

Juniper must be the main flavour, but distillers can opt for a spicy gin with the likes of cinnamon, nutmeg or clove; they can go down the citrus route with lemon, orange or grapefruit peel; or they can add little bursts of flavour with pink

peppercorns or floral botanicals such as elderflower or rose petals. New gins on the market have used ingredients as diverse as liquorice, jasmine, sea salt, chamomile and even wood shavings.

Gin is seen as a British institution, but its roots stretch across the North Sea. What we know as gin today was invented by the Dutch in the 1600s, where it was known as genever and used to treat ailments such as gout and gall stones.

Juniper was added to make the genever more palatable – so palatable, in fact, that people would feign sickness in a bid to get their hands on this cure-all elixir.

Eventually, genever was made available to the masses, including soldiers in the army, who were given a shot or two for extra confidence on the battlefield – the original ‘Dutch courage’. But gin became a victim of its own success, encapsulated in William Hogarth’s famous Gin Lane painting (left), a London street scene depicting the pitfalls of excessive consumption of ‘mother’s ruin’.

Thankfully, this rough-and-ready gin soon disappeared with the advent of the column still, a piece of engineering that produces a clean, pure spirit that led to the creation of the London Dry style still prevalent today – Gordon’s being the best-known example. And from there, it inspired bartenders to create iconic cocktails, and gin has more than its fair share: the martini; negroni; gimlet; Singapore sling; French 75; Aviation; Vesper – the list goes on.

Some spirits are suffering these days, but the gin scene has never been brighter.

Sales are up, new bottlings are launching all the time, and there’s some healthy experimentation going on. San Franciscobased No.209 ages its gins in wine casks, while Belgian distiller Forest Dry has a four-strong range with a different recipe for each season. A delicious spirit, with true authenticity, flavour and style? I’ll drink to that.

Words: Stuart Peskett

Once considered uncool, gin is now the most innovative spirit out there

DECEMBER ISSUE 132

SIX TO TRY

TANQUERAY EXPORT STRENGTH ($25 approx) My standard go-to gin; a classic that delivers a big blast of juniper and really makes a statement in a G&T. It also has enough oomph to work in cocktails when you want the gin to make its presence felt, such as in a martini or a Tom Collins. On warmer days, its citrus-led sibling, Tanqueray No.10, is a refreshing alternative.

CAPREOLUS GARDEN TIGER DRY GIN ($40-$45 approx)

STRANE UNCUT STRENGTH LONDON DRY GIN ($90-$95 approx)

One of the best gins I’ve tried this year, this is the work of distiller Barney Wilczak, who handforages botanicals near his home in England’s Cotswolds region. Loaded with delicate floral, fruity notes, this is one of the few gins I would drink neat, with a cube or two of ice – it really is that good.

This Swedish gin doesn’t come cheap, but it’s unlike any other gin on the market. Bottled at a staggering 76% ABV, it needs to be cut with water or a mixer to tame its high strength. The botanicals are a tempting line-up of lemon peel, almonds, mint and basil, among others, giving a zesty, whistle-clean flavour. Don’t drink this one neat…

CORSAIR BARREL AGED GIN ($50-$55)

HAYMAN’S OLD TOM ($20)

MONKEY 47 SLOE GIN ($55-$60 approx)

One of the hottest craft distillers on the block, Kentucky-based Corsair is known for its weird and wonderful experiments with quinoa whiskey and pumpkin-spice moonshine. Its Barrel Aged Gin is matured in casks that used to contain rum, imparting a subtle butter-toffee richness and cinnamon spiciness that works brilliantly, particularly during the festive season.

Old Tom is a sweeter style of gin that was hugely popular in 18th-century England, served from mysterious holes in the wall with a cat emblem. Thirsty punters would place a coin in the cat’s mouth and a slug of gin would be dispensed down a tube. Hayman’s version is made to a classic recipe, offering elegant notes of citrus and almond.

Sloe gin is a warming, fruity treat for the colder months served neat, as well as a great warm-weather drink poured over ice.

Monkey 47’s version uses its award-winning Black Forest gin from Germany, made with an unbelievable 47 botanicals, into which sloe berries are infused to add a rich fruitiness and its trademark deep-red colour.

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living / consume

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First, melt one clock…

Reissued for the first time in more than 40 years, Salvador Dali’s surrealist cookbook, Les Diners de Gala

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A

s weird as it may seem, Salvador Dalí published a cookbook in 1973, Les diners de Gala. It didn’t have a large print run and few copies of the original release are still in existence. He released it with the statement: “Les diners de Gala is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of taste… If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you.”

The food and photos were not just studio shots either. The dinner parties thrown by and his wife and muse, Gala, were the stuff of legend and this book documents some of the dishes that were served to their guests at these gatherings.

This reprint features all 136 recipes over 12 chapters, specially illustrated by Dalí, and organised by meal courses, including aphrodisiacs.

The illustrations and recipes are accompanied by Dalí’s extravagant musings on subjects such as dinner conversation: “The jaw is our best tool to grasp philosophical knowledge.”

Despite his tendency towards the outrageous and surreal, all of the recipes included here can be cooked at home, although they’re not five-minute meals and are somewhat dated in the era they were created. This is cuisine of the old school, with meals by leading French chefs from such stellar Paris restaurants as Lasserre, La Tour d’Argent, Maxim’s, and Le Train Bleu.

Good taste, however voluptuous, never goes out of fashion.

“The jaw is our best tool to grasp philosophical knowledge”

Les Diners de Gala,

by Salvador Dalí, is available from Taschen for $56

89

DECEMBER ISSUE 132

LIVING / COLUMN

Why Twitter is changing live TV

By Amanda Lotz

Y

et another way to watch television has emerged. More than two million viewers watched a recent NFL football game on Twitter and several million more used it to watch the first presidential debate.

For those who didn’t, here’s how it works: After opening the Twitter app and clicking ‘Moments’, you click ‘Watch Live’ to join the live stream. If you position your phone horizontally, you’ll see a full screen image of the broadcast – really no different from watching any other video. But if you hold your phone vertically, the live feed is isolated to the top third of the screen; below is a Twitter feed of hashtags related to the event. The live ‘Twittercast’ is the latest development I’ve explored in 15 years of researching the changing business of US television.

These two events illustrate different potential for Twitterdistributed video. Neither offered a game-changing experience – yet.

But these two experiments, arriving in quick succession, reveal the future of live TV, which hasn’t been significantly affected by the arrival of services like Netflix and Amazon.

Twitter did pay $10 million for the rights (though reportedly was not the highest bidder).

But a big advantage is that programmers gather a lot more information about viewers that watch on Twitter than by broadcast or cable. Knowing more about who your viewers are and how they watch can be valuable to advertisers.

Twitter, meanwhile, is paying millions because football has a vast, engaged fan base, which is the fastest way to get audiences to try something new.

But why would you, the viewer, want to watch a football game on Twitter? Well, for one, it lets you watch if there isn’t an available television.

The Twittercast creates a subscription-free, anywhere, any-screen option – even if used in as mundane a setting as sitting with your family on the couch as they watch something else on TV. The need to see sporting events in real time is

one of the reasons they have been immune to the changes time-shifting technologies – streaming, on demand or DVR recording – have wrought on network schedules of scripted programs.

In the past, networks have tried to use social media discussions to encourage viewers to turn into scheduled broadcasts. By promoting hashtags or having writers and actors live tweet during the show, they hope to create a media event and a conversation around a weekly episode.

The debate Twittercast provided contrast in this regard. There was more to engage with and was able to provoke more diverse reactions, which made it seem like eavesdropping on a lot of different conversations. Neither of these Twittercasts was revolutionary.

But they do raise questions about internet-distributed TV’s next developments. Television will never again be a predominantly live medium. But events continue to be valued for allowing viewers to watch events unfold in real time.

Although the NFL and debate Twittercast experiments suggest Twitter intends a central role in distributing live video, it’s certainly not the only game in town. Periscope, the livestreaming app owned by Twitter, and Facebook Live (noteworthy as the sources of police shooting videos this summer) are also looking for businesses based on web-distributed, live video.

But finding a business model for live, internetdistributed video is tricky. Most media events are unplanned, especially the disasters and emergencies that inspire us to huddle around screens. Moreover, most situations that truly demand live video – other than sports events – are not well-suited for commercial interruption.

Just as different business models can be found for other internet-distributed video – Netflix’s subscriber funding versus YouTube’s reliance on advertisers – different models will develop for live television. It all depends on the audience it gathers and whether viewers are willing to pay for it.

“Programmers gather more information about viewers that watch on Twitter than by cable”

90 Amanda Lotz is the Professor of Communication Studies and Screen Arts & Cultures, University of Michigan

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