Portfolio March 2016

issue

123

TAke THe money And Run How the banks have ignored all the lessons from the 2008 crash

Pole PosiTions

fine dining in dubAi

The international race for Antarctica

How it’s become a city of top food

biTcoin in cRisis?

i HATe you buTleR!

Real-world woes of virtual currency

Tech tales of the modern servant

Memories are made of this.

Standing through time, visited in an afternoon.

Remembered for a lifetime.

Zubarah Fort, part of Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, a UNESCO World Heritage site, NW Qatar

www.visitqatar.gov.qa

MARCH ISSUE 123

The business of life & living

Exclusive to Emirates First Class and Business Class

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OBAID HUMAID AL TAYER MANAGING PARTNER & GROUP EDITOR IAN FAIRSERVICE

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR GINA JOHNSON GROUP EDITOR MARK EVANS marke@motivate.ae EDITOR MATTHEW POMROY matthew.pomroy@motivate.ae SENIOR ART DIRECTOR SARA RAFAGHELLO sarar@motivate.ae SENIOR DESIGNER ROUI FRANCISCO rom@motivate.ae SUB-EDITOR SALIL KUMAR salil@motivate.ae EDITORIAL ASSISTANT LONDRESA FLORES londresa@motivate.ae GENERAL MANAGER – PRODUCTION SUNIL KUMAR sunil@motivate.ae PRODUCTION MANAGER R. MURALI KRISHNAN muralik@motivate.ae PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR VENITA PINTO venita@motivate.ae CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER ANTHONY MILNE anthony@motivate.ae GROUP SALES DIRECTOR CRAIG WAGSTAFF craig.wagstaff@motivate.ae INTERNATIONAL SALES MANAGER MARTIN BALMER martin.balmer@motivate.ae GROUP SALES MANAGER JAYA BALAKRISHNAN jaya@motivate.ae SENIOR SALES MANAGER MICHAEL UNDERDOWN michael@motivate.ae 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.

All dollar prices throughout the magazine refer to US dollars.

Published for Emirates by

12

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PORTFOLIO.

48

HOW THE BANKS IGNORED THE LESSONS OF THE 2008 CRASH

Joris Luyendijk spent two years talking to hundreds of City insiders to find out why nothing will change.

MARCH ISSUE 123

CONTENTS UPFRONT

18

INFORMATION

Earth’s atmosphere dissected

21

FOIE GRAS

One farmer puts the case for the defence

22 BE LIKE DAVID

What you can learn from David and Goliath

24

MOST WANTED

Porsche speakers, bike shelves and Super-8 cameras

26

CANNED SILENCE

How headphones became the new Do Not Disturb sign

33

BUTLERS 2.0

Butlers are increasing in number but so is the need for tech

LIVING

78

HEALTH RETREATS

Five of the top European places to rejuvenate

82

STYLE

What to wear and where to wear it

86

INVESTMENT PIECE

Hermès’ iconic and soughtafter Birkin bag

88

HOTEL

The elegance of the Ritz Carlton in Vienna

90

COLUMN

The 12 things restaurants need to stop doing

15

33,388 copies July - December 2015

PORTFOLIO.

MARCH ISSUE 123

CONTENTS FEATURES

36

DUBAI DINING

The rise of fine-dining restaurants in Dubai

44

HANDWRITTEN BY MACHINE

A new machine that can hand write letters for you... in your handwriting.

58

IRAN’S OTHER GOLD

Iranian saffron is now selling in Europe for $10,000 a pound.

62

BITCOIN’S NEW CRISIS

The virtual currency and the real people who are falling out over its future.

66

ANTARCTICA INTERNATIONAL

Right now there is a slow, and very polite invasion of Antarctica. Will it escalate?

72

SPANISH TRUFFLES

Spain’s €500-per-kilogram export trade in the delicacy that few Spaniards want

16

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upfront

exosphere 375-6,200 miles

Earth’s atmosphere dissected

upfront

portfolio.

From Understanding The World: The Atlas Of Infographics by Sandra Rendgen and Julius Weidemann

18

Portfolio.

thermosphere 53-375 miles (varies)

mesosphere 31-53 miles

stratosphere 10-31 miles

troposphere 0-10 miles

trmm satellite 250 miles

march /infographic

issue 123

hubble sPace telescoPe 375-6,200 miles

sPace shuttle 350 miles

international sPace station 250 miles

sPace shiP one 69.6 miles ultra thin film balloon 32.9 miles

f-15 12.9 miles

nasa suPer-Pressure balloon 20.8 miles

mount everest 5.5 miles

airbus a380 8.2 miles

19

Portfolio.

MARCH UPFRONT / FOIE GRAS

ISSUE 123

Friend or Foie?

I Is the luxurious food really a crime against the animal kingdom? n many ways, the fattened liver of a duck or goose is a simple ingredient. But nothing else in food rouses such strong opinions, causes fights and divides families. The Queen Of England requests foie gras pate on her visits to France, whereas her son Prince Charles campaigns against it. Last year, after a California ban on foie gras was overturned after three years, chefs cheered, animal rights groups appealed and an animal rights activist was sent to prison for a protest.

A long way from this sound and fury lies the Andrevias Farm in Pergord, France. It lies in the tiny commune of Sorges, just off the N21, which runs through 100 kilometres of mostly nothing between Limoges in the north and Perigueux in the south. Sorges is almost comically gastronomic.

It is a village of around 200

“My idea of heaven is eating pates de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.”

Sydney Smith, English writer (1771-1845)

inhabitants, which contains one baker, one restaurant and a recently rebuilt Truffle Museum.

There’s also the Andrevias Farm, where for 40 years, the Meynard family has been making foie gras.

Patriarch and grandfather Guy doesn’t even bother to Gallic shrug when he hears about protests. “Tell them to come here,” he says. “We’ve got nothing to hide. They’ll see the geese in the fields and then the feeding…”

The feeding of the goose is of course the heart of (the liver of) the matter. Foie gras is a surprisingly ancient food – dating back around 5,000 years. It was the ancient Egyptians who noticed that geese gorge themselves on food to prepare for migration and discovered that their fat livers tasted like a delicately meaty butter.

They decided to replicate this liver even when geese weren’t

about to migrate by force-feeding them, turning them in essence from geese into machines that convert corn to foie gras. This force-feeding, now called ‘gavage’, is understandably leaped upon by animal rights activists as the most inhumane practice in food production. There are stories of ducks with their feet nailed to the ground while grain is funnelled down their necks. Even without this kind of detail, force-feeding animals to eat them doesn’t sound right.

The geese at Andrevias begin gavage when they’re 12 weeks old and lasts every day for two weeks.

You can if you’re in the region – along with any tourists who want to see – approach the shed with trepidation. but the geese, who have been running free, seem content to be shepherded into a pen. A worker approaches with a tube attached to a tank. The geese move towards it. He thrusts it firmly down their neck and pulls a trigger. With a “scooch”, the dose of whipped grain is delivered and the goose waddles away.

That’s it. Or rather, “That’s it?”

When you’re stood under a walnut tree watching a goose waddle past, it seems an inordinate amount of fuss has been created for not very much. Anyone who has seen pictures of battery hens not allowed to turn around for a year or knows that veal calves are not allowed to see sunlight before they’re slaughtered can’t fail to be unimpressed by the fuss.

“They’re happy, our geese,” claims Menard.

“If you get a scared or ill goose, it doesn’t taste as nice.

“There are probably badly treated birds elsewhere. That’s true. But we don’t have anything to do with them. You can eat good foie gras and the birds will be well 21 looked after. Obviously, the foie tastes better to me. It’s obvious.

“Don’t forget that there are badly treated cows too. Bad chickens, bad lambs. If you are going to worry, worry about those.”

PORTFOLIO.

upfront

I

n the famous story, the young boy David beat Goliath by using a strategy the latter wasn’t expecting. Instead of fighting the giant in the conventional way – with armour and sword – he used a slingshot and stones to fell him. And it’s a lesson that many businesses can learn from.

To win “unfair” competition for talent you need to do something the Goliath tends not to do.

The following question helps us understand how and why.

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.

Which is more probable?

(1) Linda is a bank teller.

(2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The common answer is (2). But the probability of both events occurring together (Linda being a bank teller and active in the feminist movement) cannot be greater than the first one alone.

This ‘Linda problem’ was developed by behavioural scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They argue that people can quickly and easily come up with a stereotype based on the description and then judge the second statement to be more similar 22 to that stereotype. The image of an active feminist is so vivid, people cannot associate that with a duller stereotype of bank teller.

Our minds think like this because the mental shortcut Portfolio.

The slingshot approach What the David and Goliath story teaches business about getting ahead.

Words: Chengwei Liu

MARCH /DAVID AND GOLIATH

ISSUE 123

Going through the stats, in the film Moneyball

often saves time and it is usually reasonably accurate. A similar phenomenon was documented in the book and film Moneyball.

It told the story of the struggling Oakland A’s who, despite having one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball, were able to win as many games as Goliaths like the New York Yankees. In baseball, scouts and managers evaluated potential of young players based on whether they have the right “look” – one that’s similar to the stereotype of star players. When you get it right more than 70 per cent of the time and it only takes you, literally, a quick look, why bother checking players’ statistics?

The Oakland A’s exploited the blind spot of the bigger teams in the league by hiring against stereotype. Prediction based on stereotype is reasonably good but entails two pitfalls: (1) a false positive error (hiring a person who fits the stereotype but does not really have the talent) and (2) a false negative error (omitting a person who doesn’t fit the stereotype but has superior talent).

It is the false negative errors that smaller teams can exploit.

And they can gain advantages by paying underdogs less than they are worth because they’ve been undervalued.

Companies have adopted similar strategies. The law firm Clifford Chance employs a CV blind strategy to break Oxbridge

bias. A degree from Oxford or Cambridge is so salient that it creates a stereotype of elite and means UK legal firms are overrepresented by their graduates.

Of course, many of them are competent. But inevitably some Oxbridge graduates are overrated and become disappointments due to false positive mistakes.

More importantly, firms can omit hidden gems from other universities due to false negative mistakes.

Clifford Chance’s strategy forces evaluators to judge candidates based on track records instead of using the stereotype shortcut.

Similarly, organisations have adopt a name-blind policy to fight against racism. This should be even more appealing for smaller firms because hiring against the negative stereotype can help them identify undervalued gems.

On the one hand, missing hidden gems is an invisible error – employers rarely follow what happens to the candidates they reject. Moreover, those hired are trained and developed so they can perform competently even when they were really false positive hires.

But this can falsely boost Goliath’s confidence in the stereotype hiring strategy. The implication is that the Goliath tends to develop a blind spot naturally, awaiting some 23 smart David to exploit them.

Chengwei Liu is the associate professor of strategy and behavioural science at the University of Warwick PORTFOLIO.

MARCH ISSUE 123

UPFRONT / MOST WANTED 1

PORSCHE DESIGN 911 GT3 SOUNDBAR Made from an actual rear silencer and twin exhaust of a Porsche 911 GT3, this 200W speaker accepts audio via analogue, digital and Bluetooth and has both Dolby Digital decoding and DTS TruSurround virtual surround sound. Porsche says it gives a “deeper, measurably louder audio experience with a higher maximum volume. In short: more power”. $3,150, porsche-design.com

4

DJI PHANTOM 3 DRONE Aerial filming is now the best reason to get a drone and this is a fine machine to invest in. It comes equipped with an integrated 4K camera mounted on a threeaxis gimbal that ensures smooth video at ultrahigh resolution. You can see what it sees within a mile range and you get 23 minutes of flying time. Home movies can now look like Hollywood.

5

$1,300, dji.com

BIKE SHELF BY VADOLIBERO

MOST WANTED 24

2

WILLIAM & SON CHAMPAGNE STOPPER

The base can hold bikes of every type and size, thanks to a stainless steel universal clamp that accommodates any wheel and handlebar width, while the modular structure lets you customise the shelving. There’s also a spotlight so you can illuminate you bike like a piece of art, if you wish.

Available in natural or tinted oak. $3,995, vadolibero.com

3

KODAK SUPER-8 VIDEO CAMERA Banking on a film-stock revival (just as music had a vinyl comeback), the new Kodak video camera takes traditional film via Kodak Super 8 cartridges with 50 feet of reel. JJ Abrams, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino have lent support to the revival, but you will get a digital copy of your footage and it also has microSD capacity. $400 to $700, kodak.com PORTFOLIO.

While it may seem like one of the most niche items (after all, who doesn’t finish a bottle once open?) the design here is rather nice. Made in sterling silver and with a screw system to hold it down, your evening bubbly with hold its fizz for a champagne breakfast. $335, williamandson.com

HORTENSIA COLLECTION • VOIE LACTÉE RING

L’ART DE LA JOAILLERIE DEPUIS 1780

march issue 123

upfront / headphones

Blissful Silence Currently playing in your headphones.

Words: Lindsay Mannering

W

Portfolio.

Mary Sollosi, a 25-year-old freelance writer. And what happens when she’s approached by individuals who haven’t yet gotten the memo about what headphones really mean? “I make a big show of taking out one earbud and asking them to repeat what they said,” she said, “maintaining the charade that I was actively listening and am very surprised by the sudden interruption.”

Rosanne Salvatore sits across from me at work.

Could she, a person I communicate with all day, be tuning me out?

“There are times when I will go hours wearing headphones with no music playing,” she said. “I get a lot of satisfaction when I realise I’m doing it, and no one realises I’m doing it.”

Our collective quest for privacy sometimes reaches comedic levels: Pierce Crosby, 25, once witnessed a man talking into his headphones at a cafe, despite the disconnected wire dangling below the man’s chair. “It was quite interesting and I took my time pretending to text while listening in on his conversation.”

If we’re all pretending to be listening to something and go about performing these small improvisational acts (a dramatic earbud removal here, a “What’s that? Oh, I didn’t hear you” there, complete with near-audible eye roll), then what is actually going on?

Our private pretence may actually have positive benefits. “While putting headphones in your ears is not an act of mindfulness itself, putting in headphones is setting the conditions for you to meditate without being disturbed,” said Lodro Rinzler, a co-founder of Mndfl, a meditation studio in New York City. He recommends using headphones without music if doing so helps create a quiet environment.

Amid all of us liars, ignorers and maybe even mindful fakers, could there still be a person out there who uses headphones for their intended purpose?

Jeremy Smith, 36, a web developer, said that he has never intentionally worn headphones without music or a podcast playing. “Sounds like a good idea, though,” he said. “Maybe I will start.”

Headphones are the only “do not disturb” signs we have left

illustration: Jason raish

hen we wear headphones, it is a signal to everyone that we’re shut off, unavailable and, much like napping adults, absolutely not to be bothered. Our ear shields are barriers against barbaric city attacks like catcalls, construction or unwanted conversation from a friendly co-worker who just has, like, a super quick question “if you just have two seconds”.

We’re commuting, running errands and running departments under the polite assumption that no one knows our secret (and apologies to anyone this is outing): the headphones are on, but nothing’s playing.

Basheer Bergus, a 28-year-old associate director at a digital marketing firm, said that he “definitely” uses headphones at work without any sound coming through.

Like most of us, he uses them as a privacy screen. And if he sees someone whom he wants nothing to do with, he throws on his huge wireless Sennheiser cans – a sign that says “Silence, please.”

In a workplace where open floor plans are becoming increasingly standard, so is Bergus’ technique. Long gone are cubicle walls that, at the very least, required a polite knock on the padded Formica.

Doors, bless them, have mostly joined fax machines and fountain pens in the office afterlife.

Short of building a fort around our 26 desks using empty shipping boxes and half-functioning umbrellas, headphones are the only “Do Not Disturb” signs we have left.

“I definitely wear headphones so people don’t bother me,” said

march issue 123

upfront / online ads

X Marks the Spot The annoyance of online advertising. Words: Sydney Ember

A

ds pop up and play automatically, daring readers to shut them down with feats of fine motor control. The ads commandeer the screen. They expand and contract. They cover the text and refuse to budge.

And then there is the dreaded X – the one that invites you to close the ad yet seems impervious to repeated clicks of the cursor or the jabs and thrusts of even the most powerful fingers. (Perhaps you have tried a hammer?)

Sometimes the ads dance and move across the screen, forcing the user into a hot pursuit of the X. “How many times have you hit the X and it doesn’t work?” said Tony Weisman, chief executive of the digital agency DigitasLBi North America. “Now it’s just a cruel joke.”

Online advertisers and consumers have tried to outmanoeuvre each other since the early days of the Web – with sellers continually finding ways to prolong engagement with ads

Up to 50 per cent of advertising clicks on mobile were accidental

and users trying equally hard to avoid them. But the catand-mouse game has reached a critical point, especially as devices have gotten smaller: Ads have become so annoying, consumers and industry executives say, that they could sink the internet if they were not also helping support it.

“Ads are getting more pervasive and more difficult to easily get past,” Weisman said.

“We are just destroying the user experience.”

Portfolio.

29

MARCH

30

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR POP-UP ADVERTS ON THE INTERNET? The pop-up advert was invented by a man called Ethan Zuckerman. In 2014 he wrote a piece for The Atlantic and apologised. His explanation was: “It was a way to associate an ad with a user’s page without putting it directly on the page, which advertisers worried would imply an association between their brand and the page’s content. Specifically, we came up with it when a major car company freaked out that they’d bought a banner ad on a page that celebrated sex. I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good.”

ISSUE 123

PORTFOLIO.

UPFRONT / ONLINE ADS On desktop computers, ads have turned web pages into mazes. A recent visit to Salon. com, for example, meant fending off expanding banner ads and navigating video ads that played automatically. Sponsored posts and animated display ads filled each page.

On tablets and smartphones, the problem is more acute. Ads dominate the smaller screens, and many ads are not formatted correctly because of out-of-date technical language. The X button can be so tiny that clicking it requires a fair amount of luck.

Industry executives often cite a 2012 report that said up to 50 per cent of advertising clicks on mobile were accidental.

Annoying ads have become problematic for Anthony Martin, a 32-year-old consultant for a project management firm, iPhone 6 in hand. He had moved to New York not long ago, he said, and was using a smartphone app to determine the best subway routes. But as soon as the app loads, ads take over his screen – first a banner ad on the bottom, then a full-screen ad. No amount of desperate jabbing does the trick.

“Sometimes I miss a stop,” he said. “Especially with fat fingers.”

Industry executives say it is quite likely that publishers and mobile developers are deliberately building ads that are hard to escape or shut down.

“The ones that are incredibly invasive are designed to be that way,” said Brian Gleason, global chief executive of Xaxis, a media and technology company owned by advertising giant WPP. Mike Pilawski, vice president for product at Vungle, which builds and serves mobile video ads, says some advertisers ask Vungle to make the whole screen clickable at the end of the ad – not just the X or other specific buttons – which would make the ad difficult to close. He says

Vungle refuses to do that, but it does design ads with X buttons in the top left instead of the usual top right. The switch confounds some users, though he insists that is not the intent.

Bad Web ads have deep roots.

According to Ethan Zuckerman, who helped invent the pop-up ad in the 1990s, those behind the early internet turned to advertising out of necessity.

“There were so few people online, and the internet was so new, and everybody still thought it was a fad,” he said. “It would have been hard to convince anybody to put money down.”

Many web users are willing to put up with the ads to get the content they want or to find and buy the merchandise they are seeking. Ads do serve a purpose beyond just stoking frustration.

But many consumers are fighting back. A rising number are installing ad blockers on both desktop and mobile. In September, Apple enabled ad blocking apps in its new mobile operating system, iOS 9, and many soared to the top of its App Store chart. Google blocks Flash ads on its Chrome browser.

Most industry executives recognise that bombarding

“Many web users are willing to put up with the ads to get the content they want or to find and buy the merchandise they are seeking” Advertisers soon began tracking Web users and serving them targeted ads. Later, companies like Rocket Fuel and Rubicon Project started selling technologies that automated this process, which eventually helped decrease the price of online ads.

But cheap online ads squeezed publishers, who responded by cramming more aggressive ad formats onto their sites to secure enough revenue to stay alive.

Online readers end up caught in the middle, forced to withstand a constant stream of intrusive ads. Making matters worse, the ads and the technology behind them are bogging down the Web. The worst ads load so slowly that they use up data plans and sap battery life.

consumers with intrusive ads is potentially undermining the business model that supports much of the web. Larry Page, chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently said the industry needed to produce ads that were “less annoying” and “quicker to load” – and many publishers are reconsidering their advertising models.

Eleanor Cleverly, general manager of Boston.com, said the site was reducing the number of display ads on its pages. It has started stripping away ads on its mobile site. But for Boston.com – and many other publishers – simply doing away with ads is not a viable solution.

“If we’re going to offer our editorial news reporting for free, we’re going to have some sort of sponsor for that,” Cleverly said.

march issue 123

upfront / butlers

You texted m’lord?

Why today’s butlers are trading silver trays for iPads. Words: Robert Frank

W

hen Graham Lefford started working as a butler in 1989, his daily tasks usually involved planning formal dinners and carefully arranging the daily breakfast tray with coffee and a newspaper.

But on a recent afternoon, Lefford had to tackle a more modern butler problem: a giant TV screen that had failed to descend from the ceiling. He spent nearly an hour troubleshooting the electrical system, testing the dropdown motors and scrolling through the multimedia TV controller before finally rebooting the home’s universal software interface to get the screen to pop down.

“These homes are so complicated and filled with so much technology,” said Lefford, who works for a wealthy family in New York. “If you don’t have basic tech skills,

you can’t do the job anymore.”

The life of the butler has been transformed by the digital age. As the homes of the rich become filled with new status symbols of technology – such as retinal scanners, iPad-controlled door locks, hidden flat-panel screens and underwater lighting shows – butlers are becoming more like one-man information technology departments.

Rich homeowners are increasingly looking for house managers and butlers with corporate technology experience or engineering degrees. Butler schools are teaming up with home-software companies to better train students while homestaffing companies are increasingly recruiting from tech departments at big companies and hotel chains.

Butlers, themselves – who were transformed into more corporatestyle “household managers” in

2m

Estimated number of butlers currently working worldwide

the 1990s and 2000s – are now struggling to balance their core job of pampering their finicky bosses with managing temperamental smart-home systems.

“There is no silver tray anymore,” said David N Youdovin, chief executive of Hire Society, a household staffing firm based in New York. “If you can’t set up a secure wireless network or sync an iPad or use the Crestron or Savant, it’s hard to be considered for these jobs,” he said, referring to two home-automation brands.

Granted, even the nonrich struggle with increasingly complicated home technologies.

But in recent years, the rich have taken smart homes to a new level – and assigned their household staffs to keep them running. Weber Tysvaer, an estate manager and chief of staff to several rich families, said one home he worked in had so many motherboards and servers in the basement, the connecting wires formed giant, multicolored columns along the walls.

“It looked like a cathedral organ,” he said. “It was actually quite beautiful – unless something went wrong.”

Tysvaer worked in a Manhattan triplex, owned by a Middle Eastern prince, that was loaded with stateof-the-art technology and security.

Yet systems were often crashing: the Wi-Fi rarely worked; the homesoftware system always had to be restarted, and a set of Star Trek-like doors designed to open and close with a smooth whoosh at the push 33 of a button often failed to close.

The entire tech system for the home had to be redone, at a cost of about $500,000, a little over a year after it was built.

Portfolio.

MARCH UPFRONT / BUTLERS

ISSUE 123

Tysvaer has worked in other homes where an iPad can be used to dial up a movie, change the music, set the lights, turn on a waterfall or have special custommade scents pumped through the ventilation system. But many times the systems don’t work together, he said – and finding the root of the problem can take hours of calls with product manufacturers and software teams.

The buyers may not realise that these systems “are far more powerful and complex for what they really need”, he said.

Lefford, who travels between his home in Michigan and his employer’s home in New York, said technology had given him more freedom, but also more headaches.

He can manage his employer’s New York home remotely with an iPad, setting the heat, shutting the blinds, turning off the lights and locking the doors with the tap of a screen. He even accepted a flower delivery at the home in New York, and selected bouquets for each room, while sitting in Michigan.

But one Sunday night when Lefford was off duty, his boss couldn’t turn on the lights on an upper floor of the house. “To fix it, I would have to remove a panel from an electronics cabinet, unplug something else and hit a reset button,” he said. “They just decided to leave them off till I came back the next day.”

Butler training schools and associations are forging closer ties to the companies that make tech gear for high-end homes. The 34 Domestic Estate Management Association says it’s working with Crestron and Savant to create training programmes to teach butlers how to run and troubleshoot smart-home systems.

PORTFOLIO.

Other butler schools are adding courses in information technology networking and programming.

“It’s part of the standard training now,” said Matthew Haack, president of the association.

In many homes of the superrich, technology is so complicated that owners are hiring specialised techies to work alongside butlers and household managers. Kevin G Johnson, founder of Green Baize Door, a London-based placement agency and advisory firm, said he recently placed two information technology specialists in mega-homes in Britain. One had been the chief engineer for a big London hotel group while the other came from a corporate

According to the International Guild Of Professional Butlers there has been a steady increase of butlers in the past 30 years with a surge during the past 10.

IT department. They are now earning higher salaries, “in the six figures”, according to Johnson.

Sometimes a butler’s toughest tech task is to get rid of technology. Lefford said a previous employer got so frustrated with his remote digital thermostat systems that when he started planning a new stateof-the-art home, he requested the old-fashioned Honeywell dials. But the company installing the home’s heating and cooling system kept pushing for a more expensive digital controller.

“My employer insisted on the dial,” Lefford said. “He said, ‘I want to be able to change the heat in my own damn house.’”

features

portfolio.

dubai food

36

portfolio.

The meal deal Dubai has become one of the world’s best cities for fine dining. So how did this happen, and can the city sustain this huge boom in high-end restaurants? Words: Matt Pomroy

dubai food

Charcoal and pericana dish from Quique Dacosta at Enigma restaurant Dubai

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n many ways, Dubai is comparable to Las Vegas. While neither had a long history of fine dining, both were desert towns pushing for tourism and the amounts of money flowing through these places has seen a number of top hotels opening. And with all the new openings come the top restaurants, fine dining and big-name chefs.

For decades, most of Dubai’s nightlife revolved around high-end hotels. It’s where most of the bars, nightclubs and restaurants are located and it’s rare that restaurants outside of hotels are licensed, which makes in-hotel dining more attractive not only for visitors but also expat residents.

In mid-2014 Dubai, according to the Dubai Corporation For Tourism And Commerce Marketing, had 612 hotels. By the end of 2016, an additional 140 hotels will have been added to that total. If there’s one thing Dubai does well, it’s build hotels. The new hotels that have been built in the last decade are mostly four- and five-star properties and the thought of opening a top hotel without a quality restaurant is unthinkable. In fact, there are normally several onsite.

In the case of Atlantis hotel on the Palm, they have 23 restaurants including a branch of Nobu, Giorgio Locatelli’s Italian restaurant, Yuan (from chef Jeff Tan, formerly of Hakkasan Mayfair) and Gordon’s Ramsay’s recent return to Dubai with his Brit restaurant Bread Street Kitchen & Bar. Mark Patten is the senior vice president of food and beverage at Atlantis. He oversees those restaurants and is currently setting up around ten more for the forthcoming $1.5 billion Royal Atlantis Resort, adjacent to his current hotel. The new restaurants he is working on are among many others on the way.

“It’s predicted that there will be 1,600 new restaurants in the UAE by 2018, that’s equivalent to more than one restaurant per day, which is pretty intense stuff,” he tells Portfolio. Patten believes that the key factors driving this incredible expansion include an emergent young population with a high disposable income as well as the growth of Dubai as a tourist destination. In addition, economic conditions have made Dubai a favourable city for setting up a restaurant business.

“There are also lower expenses on labour costs, tax and VAT, which play an important part in the influx of high-end restaurants opening as it enables 38 a lower running cost, which is obviously attractive to any new outlet,” he adds. “Being tax free also allows the residents of Dubai to dine out more often due to a higher disposable income. When you consider that 25 per cent of the population has an annual income of over Dhs150,000 ($40,837) and portfolio.

“It’s predicted that there will be 1,600 new restaurants in the UAE by 2018, equivalent to more than one new restaurant per day”

its tax free, it’s absolutely going to play a huge part in this.”

As a result, chefs from Michelin-stared restaurants elsewhere have been enticed to open in the UAE. Gordon Ramsey has also likened Dubai to “a mini Las Vegas attracting the best chefs from around the world” and as well as his new restaurant at the Atlantis Hotel, he also intends to bring to Dubai a branch of his three-Michelin-starred London restaurant. Other chefs from Michelinstarred restaurants who have already opened here include Marco Pierre White, Atul Kotchar, Nobu Matsuhisa, Gary Rhodes, Heinz Beck, Pierre Gagnaire, Jean-George Vongerichten, Yannick Alleno and Vineet Bhatia and more.

Indian chef Bhatia was one of the first to open in the city and has witnessed the rapid growth. He tells us, “I first came in 2004 and there was nobody

dubai food

Left: Rang Mahal restaurant Top: Rasmalai Cheese Cake at Indego Middle: Wild Seabass Ceviche at Coya Bottom: Blackened cod at Nobu, Atlantis The Palm hotel Dubai

here, only Gordon had Verre at the Hilton, and we were opening up Indego and people were laughing at me, saying, ‘Are you crazy? Dubai?’ I said, ‘No, it’ll come, it’ll come, I can sense it’ but now you name any chef back in Europe, they all want to come to Dubai and set up an outpost.”

For others, Dubai is now the obvious place to set up a restaurant.

“For us coming to Dubai was just a natural progression,” adds Vongerichten, a chef with an empire of 30 restaurants worldwide. “Dubai is an exciting city, people are now coming here from all of the Middle East, Europe and Asia. And now we’re here we are working with local farmers for fresh herbs, lettuce and “You name any greens. Eventually you will see, there will be a chef back in lot more farmers here Europe, they too, but for Dubai right now, the world is all want to source.” come to Dubai a local Perhaps the most and set up an interesting new restaurant concept in outpost” the city is avant-garde restaurant Enigma.

Housed at the Palazzo Versace hotel, chefs from the San Pellegrino Top 50 Restaurants have a residency before handing over to someone else on the list. It’s planned to have four different chefs every years and launched recently with Quique Dacosta, whose eponymous restaurant in Spain holds a full three Michelin stars. His food at Enigma has been getting rave reviews. The next chef to take the space is yet to be announced, but Portfolio has learned that it’s someone from a Scandinavian restaurant, which hints at either Noma or Fäviken.

And it’s not just the name chefs that have set up something new here. Increasingly, restaurants that have been a success elsewhere simply replicate the experience in Dubai with the same name, menu and (usually) staff from the original, moving out to bring that experience to the Middle East. London restaurants like Gaucho, Hakkasan, Coya, Geales and Novokov; Catch and China Grill from New York; La Petit Maison, Sass Café and Bistrot Bagatelle from the south of France or La Cantine du Faubourg from Paris; TOKO from Sydney, and so on. A restaurant that does well in a big city 39 increasingly opens a branch in Dubai.

A branch of Cipriani is just about to open in the financial centre. Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez is opening as is his countryman Jaime Pesaque with his restaurant Mayta. The Galvin Brothers Chris and Jeff will open two places at the Citywalk portfolio.

dubai food

“For me, the top cities around the world are London, Tokyo, New York, Barcelona and Dubai”

Bread St. Kitchen (Gordon Ramsay) Nobu (Nobu Matsuhisa) Ronda Locatelli (Giorgio Locatelli)

development, while globally renowned Japanese restaurant Sumosan is about to open at The Taj Dubai hotel and the outstanding Los Angles restaurant Asia De Cuba is also slated for a 2016 opening.

Even the venerable London institution, The Ivy, has an outlet where the famous shepherd’s pie is every bit as good as the original in London, and the stained glass windows are the same design. There are, however, no celebrities dining here, but neither is there too much trouble getting a table. And that’s true of the city as a whole – it’s uncommon that you can’t get a table in a top restaurant by calling to book the day before, thus letting you eat great food on a weekend whim.

Rhodes Twenty10 (Gary Rhodes) Maya (Richard Sandoval)

RW1 (Gary Rhodes) Indego by Vineet (Vineet Bhatia)

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ast year, Jean-Luc Naret the F&B senior vice president for the Jumeirah Group, and former publisher of the Michelin Guide, predicted that within five years Dubai would be one of the top culinary destinations in the world. Bhatia belives that Dubai is already at the stage: “For me the top cities around the world are London, Tokyo, New York, Barcelona and Dubai.”

It’s not, however, something that is getting much global recognition. The UAE isn’t covered by the Michelin Guide so no restaurant here has Michelin stars. The San Pellegrino Top 50 has nothing from the city and the sole entry in the top 100 is Japanese restaurant Zuma at number 88. The fact that Zuma is the sole representative is maybe a sign that the judges are a little behind the times when it comes to Dubai. Local creation OKKU is arguably a better Japanese restaurant with more inventive food.

One of the results of top chefs from elsewhere going to Dubai has been a knock on effect to these local, original restaurants. The famous, big-name chef opens somewhere and brings in his staff from home, then they stay in the city and eventually launch their own place. And the standard is raised.

It happened with Gordon Ramsay’s original 40 Dubai venture Verre. The head chef from 2001, Jason Atherton, has now opened his own place, Social. Two of Ramsay’s others protégés, Scott Price and Nick Alves took over Verre and launched Table 9, which was a better restaurant than the one it replaced. The pair now have their new venture Taste Kitchen. portfolio.

Toro Toro (Richard Sandoval)

Social by Heinz Beck (Heinz Beck)

STAY (Yannick Alléno) Pots, Pans and Boards (Tom Aitkens)

Marina Social (Jason Atherton) China Grill

Wheeler’s of St James (Marco Pierre White)

Novikov

ClĂŠ (Greg Malouf)

Catch

dubai food Vivaldi (Alfredo Russo)

Bistrot Bagatelle

Mayta (Jaime Pesaque) Enigma (Rotating guest chefs)

Gaucho La Petit Maison

Signature by Sanjeev Kapoor (Sanjeev Kapoor)

Sass Cafe Jean Georges Dining Room (Jean-Georges Vongerichten)

Mint Leaf of London Cipriani Delphine Restaurant & Bar

Coya

La Cantine du Faubourg The Ivy Hakkasan

Reflets par Pierre Gagnaire (Pierre Gagnaire)

Rivington Grill TOKO Rang Mahal (Atul Kochhar)

Junoon (Vikas Khanna)

Some of the notable big-name chefs and imported restaurants brands that have made Dubai into a top city for eating out

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Left: Izu Ani, of La Serre Bistro & Boulangerie.

Right top: strawberry linzer from Jean-George Dining Room.

Right bottom: Sumosan’s tartar tuna, avocado, quail egg and seasoned with truffle oil

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Likewise, Izu Ani, the head chef from French transplant La Petit Maison, left to set up his own restaurant La Serre Bistro & Boulangerie, which is superior to his previous employer’s and is now one of the best places to eat in the entire region. The number of homegrown restaurants for fine-dining are also growing, including the likes of Qbara interpreting Arabic food in creative modern ways.

Chef Ani acknowledges the unusual culture in Dubai that has made for such a strong dining scene in a short short space of time.

“It stems back to the early days when people didn’t believe that Dubai could supply authentic products, of good quality, from different cultures.

However, people are now seeing the success of existing restaurants and have realised it’s a destination that takes food seriously. Top chefs are bringing their know-how and experiences from their training around the world and applying their skills here to create some truly unique concepts. In some 42 cases, it is easier to source higher quality produce here than back in their home countries due to the central location, giving them better access to the Middle East and Africa, for example. Due to the laws in Europe, sometimes you can be restricted to what can and can’t be imported.” portfolio.

“More homegrown concepts are needed to stabilise the market for a long-term success plan”

nd this has had an influence at all levels of dining, not just the higher end establishments. Strangely, where Dubai was lacking was the mid-range of the dining scene.

For example, you can eat incredible Indian food at cafes and restaurants in the Karama area for next to nothing, or fully open the wallet and have a seven-course tasting menu at a fine-dining restaurant, but it was hard to find great places in between, but that middle-ground is now beginning to flourish as well.

These may sound like small things, but a rounded dining scene is vital for any city and the gaps in the culinary map are being filled in. This year’s annual food festival had the addition of Eat The World DXB, an offshoot that saw street food celebrated, including 15 food trucks that were shipped in from as far as London for the event. Even at street food level, Dubai is prepared to bring people in to cater for, and inspire, the residents.

So is this growth across the board anywhere near sustainable? Bhatia is confident that it’s positive thing and states, “The more hotels are opening up, the more chefs are coming in and the competition is building up, but in a very positive manner, there’s enough for everybody… but increasingly you need to be good at what you do.”

Which sounds like a polite way of saying, increased competition is going to kill off the places that are not as great. And they don’t all work out, of course. Marco Pierre White’s unfortunately-named restaurant Titanic failed to stay afloat and others have also gone under, but the turnover is nothing like as vicious as in New York or London. Some, however, believe that Dubai could be reaching a saturation point.

“I fear it may come to that, where restaurants simply cannot compete for footfall,” Ani says.

“Currently, restaurants are still making the investment in the hope that their concept will attract customers to their venue; however, I think in Dubai, there will be a revision because the restaurant offering is starting to outweigh the demand.”

dubai food

Ani believes that the whole restaurant scene in Dubai will have a “recalibration” but feels the future should be homegrown: “Instead of buying into global brands and installing them here, we should look at investing in and creating more homegrown brands and take the time to nurture and grow them so that we can begin to export these brand names to other countries.

“Dubai needs a long-term vision, investing in grassroots training academies; education and other educational avenues, which will help this industry grow. The foresight is needed to appreciate existing talent and to work on these relationships to grow together. More homegrown concepts are needed to stabilise the market for a long-term success plan.”

In Dubai there are currently around 7,500 restaurants in total, which puts it at roughly one for every 280 inhabitants – in New York it’s about one for every 420 – and many more are on the way, which will create fierce competition much like exists in New York or London.

Dubai is not, and probably never will be at the 43 level of London, New York or Paris when it comes to fine dining, but right now the city is still one of the best places in the world for eating out… and it’s rapidly improving every year.

We should be celebrating that. portfolio.

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The (im)personal Touch A handwritten card, signed and sealed by the latest technology Words: Eilene Zimmerman

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Sonny Caberwal, chief executive of Bond. Behind him is a writing machine the company designed to produce personalised notes

igital tools have made communicating with others easier but not necessarily more thoughtful, and this bothered Sonny Caberwal. “We’re in a rush to make everything disappear,” he said.

Receiving a handwritten thank-you note or letter these days feels special, but it also requires some work. “You have to assemble all the pieces,” Caberwal said – including paper, a pen, the recipient’s address, an envelope and a stamp – and then the note has to be written and mailed, all of which is time-consuming. He wanted to enable people to do that more easily, by harnessing technology to create a product that still felt very personal.

His company, Bond, harks back to a time of fountain pens, creamy sheets of writing paper and wax-sealed envelopes. Caberwal, founder and chief executive of the New York City startup, describes it as “the opposite of Snapchat”. Bond was started in 2013, and has about 50 full-time employees and several high-profile backers, like Gary D. Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs, and rapper Nasir Jones (known as Nas).

Although handwritten notes and cards may seem like artefacts of the 20th century, greeting cards are still a strong business. According to the Greeting Card Association, Americans purchase

about 6.5 billion cards a year and annual sales are estimated to be $7 billion to $8 billion. Despite a culture awash in digital communications, the greeting card and stationery industries have not declined precipitously but have remained largely flat, said Patti Stracher, director of the National Stationery Show, an annual trade show and business event for stationery, greeting card and gift companies.

“One could say the digital age has grown connectivity and expanded the reasons for other forms of personal communication, for a tangible, experiential connection,” she said At the Greeting Card Association’s annual convention in October, nearly every presentation included a discussion of the intersection of digital technology and traditional greeting cards, said Carlos Lansó, the organisation’s president. “We’re actually finding that social media gives people another opportunity to identify card-worthy occasions,” he said. “You can’t save a Facebook birthday message and put it in a drawer.”

That overlap of digital and traditional is where Bond lives. The company built its own writing machine, which can produce personalised notes for every customer. Designed by the company’s chief technology officer, Kenji Larsen, the machines have robotic arms that can hold a pen, a paintbrush or a marker. The paper is moved around using static electricity – rather than a roller – so it stays pristine, with no wrinkles or marks. Bond also seals each envelope with wax, adds postage and mails it.

Customers can choose from a variety of hand- 45 writing styles, or they can have their own handwriting copied and digitised for $500. Each customer’s original signature is uploaded to Bond via smartphone, to be used on cards and notes. Customers also upload recipients’ addresses. If an address portfolio.

handwritten notes

is unknown, the service will send an e-mail or text message to the recipient asking for it. An invitationonly premium service, Bond Black, costs $1,200 a year and provides clients with a personalised mobile app to send notes in their own handwriting on custom stationery.

Many of Bond’s biggest customers are commercial, including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and small independent businesses like professional services firms and real estate brokers. “Companies spend $23 billion on customer relationship management tools to understand and have a more personal relationship with their customers. We are the physical implementation of that,” Caberwal said.

One Bond client, a Fortune 500 retailer, tested the service by sending personalised thank-you notes to some of its best customers. Those customers, Caberwal said, ended up spending, on average, $16 more each month after receiving the thank-you note and returned 33 per cent less merchandise.

Caberwal followed an unusual path on his way to starting Bond. He was a corporate lawyer, played percussion with the band Thievery Corporation, founded a tea store, modelled for Kenneth Cole and, with his wife, started the online fashion company Exclusively.com in India. That company was ultimately acquired by Indian e-commerce marketplace Flipkart. By that time he, his wife and their young daughter were back in New York, and Caberwal was looking to start another company.

“That’s really what I know how to do best,” he said, “build e-commerce companies.”

Bond now has 200 robotic writing machines in its Manhattan facilities (although the machines are manufactured at a plant it owns in Rhinebeck, New York), and it also produces its own stationery.

The company raised “a few million” in seed fund46 ing, Caberwal said, and is in the midst of an effort to raise $3 million. By the end of the year, Bond expects to have about $500,000 a month in sales, he said, adding that revenue has been growing from 30 to 50 per cent a month. Caberwal said he expected Bond to be profitable by the second portfolio.

“Customers can choose from a variety of styles, or they can have their own handwriting copied and digitised for $500”

quarter of 2016. A single card costs $3.50, but for corporate customers with larger orders, the price ranges from $2 to $2.50 a card.

Jason Hirschhorn, founder and chief executive of the New York start-up Redef, which provides curated information streams, began using Bond’s services this summer. “They are using robotics in a very clever way,” Hirschhorn said. “I don’t have a lot of time, but I like the idea of being able to use personalised stationery in my own hand, using my own words, all done remotely for me. And it’s all in my computer, so I can track what I’ve done.”

Saneel Radia, founder and president of Finch15, a New York firm that helps companies develop new products and services, uses Bond’s service early in his relationships with customers and business partners. At first Radia had his own handwriting duplicated but then switched to one of the styles offered

by Bond. “I hate what my handwriting looks like, so I upgraded it,” he said. “Now it’s an odd mix of creative and energetic; handwriting I wish I had.”

Radia said people often thanked him for the notes they received, and he readily admitted that a robot had written them. “Bond, at the intersection of service and technology, so using the service shows that our company has its finger on the pulse of what is new and useful in this space.”

Although the cards created by Bond are not actually handwritten, they are still a far cry from an e-mail or a mass-produced thank-you note.

“You’re giving someone something that took time and is work – not the same amount of work as mailing a letter you wrote yourself, but more than a text message that says, ‘Thanks for the meeting,’” Radia said. “It’s thoughtful, and it is my sentiments.

And it comes in an envelope with a wax seal, which certainly helps.”

cover story

How banks ignored tHe lessons of tHe crasH Joris Luyendijk spent two years talking to hundreds of City insiders.

They revealed how close we came to disaster – and how quickly finance went back to business as usual 48

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CRASH COURSE

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sk people where they were on 9/11, and most have a memory to share. Ask where they were when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and many will struggle even to remember the correct year. The 158-year-old Wall Street bank filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. As the news broke, insiders experienced an atmosphere of unprecedented panic. One former investment banker recalled: “I thought: so this is what the threat of war must feel like. I remember looking out of the window and seeing the buses drive by.

People everywhere going through a normal working day – or so they thought. I realised: they have no idea. I called my father from the office to tell him to transfer all his savings to a safer bank. Going home that day, I was genuinely terrified.”

A veteran at a small credit rating agency who spent his whole career in the City Of London told me with genuine emotion: “It was terrifying.

50 Absolutely terrifying. We came so close to a global meltdown.” He had been on holiday in the week Lehman went bust. “I remember opening up the paper every day and going: ‘Oh my God.’ I was on my BlackBerry following events. Confusion, embarrassment, incredulity… I went through the portfolio.

A trader looks on in September 30, 2008, following the US House Of Representatives’ initial rejection of the $700 billion rescue package

whole gamut of human emotions. At some point my wife threatened to throw my BlackBerry in the lake if I didn’t stop reading on my phone. I couldn’t stop.”

Other financial workers in the City, who were at their desks after Lehman defaulted, described colleagues sitting frozen before their screens, paralysed – unable to act even when there was easy money to be made. Things were looking so bad, they said, that some got on the phone to their families: “Get as much money from the ATM as you can.” “Rush to the supermarket to hoard food.” “Buy gold.”

“Get everything ready to evacuate the kids to the country.” As they recalled those days, there was often a note of shame in their voices, as if they felt humiliated by the memory of their vulnerability.

Even some of the most macho traders became visibly uncomfortable. One said to me in a grim voice: “That was scary, mate. I mean, not film scary.

Really scary.”

I spent two years, from 2011 to 2013, interviewing about 200 bankers and financial workers as part of an investigation into banking culture in the City Of London after the crash. Not everyone I spoke to had been so terrified in the days and weeks after Lehman collapsed. But the ones who had phoned their families in panic explained to me that what they

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efore the crash there was virtually nothing to explain finance to outsiders in accessible language. As a result, ordinary people trying to form an opinion about finance over the past decades have had very little to go on, and many seem to have latched on to the images provided by films and TV. The stereotype of the boring banker began to change in the ’80s when finance was deregulated.

Following Ronald Reagan’s dictum, “Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem,” banks were allowed to unite under one roof activities that regulation had previously required to be divided between separate firms and banks.

They were able to grow to sizes many times

UK chancellor Gordon Brown, June 20, 2007

Deregulation in the 1980s meant that bankers became immensely powerful

were afraid of was the domino effect. The collapse of a global megabank such as Lehman could cause the financial system to come to a halt, seize up and then implode. Not only would this mean that we could no longer withdraw our money from banks, it would also mean that lines of credit would stop. As the fund manager George Cooper put it in his book The Origin Of Financial Crises: “This financial crisis came perilously close to causing a systemic failure of the global financial system. Had this occurred, global trade would have ceased to function within a very short period of time.” Remember that this is the age of just-in-time inventory management, Cooper added – meaning supermarkets have very small stocks. With impeccable understatement, he said: “It is sobering to contemplate the consequences of interrupting food supplies to the world’s major cities for even a few days.”

These were the dominos threatening to fall in 2008. The next tile would be hundreds of millions of people worldwide all learning at the same time that they had lost access to their bank accounts and that supplies to their supermarkets, pharmacies and petrol stations had frozen. The TV images that have come to define this whole episode – defeated-looking Lehman employees carrying boxes of their belongings through Wall Street – have become objects of satire. As if it were only a matter of a few hundred overpaid people losing their jobs: Look at the Masters Of The Universe now, brought down to our level!

In reality, those cardboard box-carrying bankers were the beginning of what could very well have been a genuine breakdown of society. Although we did not quite fall off the edge after the crash in the way some bankers were anticipating, the painful effects are still being felt in almost every sector. At this distance seven years on, however, it’s hard to see what has changed. And if nothing has changed, it could all happen again.

bigger than a country’s GDP – the assumption being that the market would be self-regulating.

The changes also meant that bankers became immensely powerful.

Before 2008 UK Labour chancellor, Gordon Brown, could give a speech to a gathering of bankers and asset managers and tell them: “The financial services sector in Britain, and the City Of London at the centre of it, is a great example of a highly skilled, high value-added, talent-driven industry that shows how we can excel in a world of global competition. Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you already demonstrate that is the hallmark of your success.”

Those words were spoken in 2007, and a year later the world found itself in the middle of the biggest financial panic since the 1930s. In the end, 51 it was only through a combination of pure luck, extremely expensive nationalisations and bailouts, the lowest interest rates in recorded history plus an on-going experiment in mass money printing, that total meltdown was averted. portfolio.

The post-Lehman panic was followed by a wave of investigations and reconstructions by journalists, writers and politicians. More than 300 books have been published about the crash in English alone. Every western country held extensive hearings and produced detailed recommendations. Everything you need to know about what is wrong with finance and the banks today is in their reports; the problem is that there is so much more that needs to be explained.

Most areas inside banking had little or nothing to do with the crash, while many players outside banking bore a heavy responsibility, 52 too, including insurers, credit rating agencies, accountancy firms, financial law firms, central banks, regulators and politicians. Investors such as pension funds had been egging the banks on to make more profits by taking more risk. Unless you had a firm understanding of finance, the portfolio.

We went from ‘We nearly died from this’ to ‘We survived this’

A man carrying a box leaves the Lehman Brothers’ European headquarters building in Canary Wharf in east London, on September 15, 2008

causes of the crash were very unclear, and this must be part of the reason why the clearest and most urgent lesson of all would get lost or buried: the financial system itself had become dangerously flawed.

After the crash of 2008, ignorance among the general public, reticence among complicit mainstream politicians and a deeply skewed and sensationalist portrayal of finance in the mass media conspired to create the narrative that the crash was caused by greed or by some other character flaw in individual bankers: psychopathy, gambling addiction or cocaine use. (A whole genre of City memoirs sprang up with titles such as Binge Trading: The Real Inside Story Of Cash, Cocaine And Corruption In The City. Gordon Gekko returned for a sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.)

From there it was a small step to the notion that we can fix finance by getting rid of the “jerks”, as the plain speaking former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond put it. When Diamond was forced to resign in July 2012 over a scandal involving interest rate rigging by his traders, his successor, Antony Jenkins, also promised to focus on changing the culture. And so the same banks that brought us the mess of 2008 eagerly embraced the need for cultural change – which alone should arouse our suspicions. If there is one recurring theme in the many conversations I had with City insiders, it was the need for structural rather than cultural change; not so much different bankers, but a different system.

“Sometimes I feel as if finance has reacted to the crisis the way a motorist might after a nearaccident,” said the City veteran at a small credit rating agency whose wife had almost chucked his phone into a lake at the height of the panic.

“There is the adrenaline surge directly after the lucky escape, followed by the huge shock when you realise what could have happened. But as the journey continues and the scene recedes in the rear-view mirror, you tell yourself: maybe it wasn’t that bad. The memory of your panic fades, and you even begin to misremember what happened.

Was it really that bad?”

He was a soft-spoken man, the sort to send a text message if he is going to be five minutes late to a meeting. But now he was really angry: “If you had told people at the height of the crisis that years later we’d have had no fundamental changes, nobody would have believed you. Such was the panic and fear. But here we are. It’s back to business as usual.

We went from ‘We nearly died from this’ to ‘We survived this’.

The City is governed by a code of silence and fear of publicity; those caught talking to the press

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without a PR officer present could be sacked or sued. But once I had persuaded City insiders to talk (always and only on condition of anonymity), they were remarkably forthcoming.

“I have the wrong accent and I went to a badschool,” said one City veteran, after explaining that for many years he had made millions at a top bank only to move to an even better-paying hedge fund.

“Forty years ago, I wouldn’t even have been given an interview in the City. Finance today is fiercely meritocratic. Doesn’t matter if you’re black or working class, if you can do something better than the other person, you’ll move up.”

Hilliary Clinton, favourite to be the next president, has been paid upwards of $100,000 a speech to address small audiences at global banks

The problem with today’s banks is that those who accept the risks are no longer those who get stuck with the bill

H

e was a mathematician by training, and his direct manner reminded me of stallholders at the biggest open market in my hometown of Amsterdam – tough guys with a highly developed mistrust of pretentiousness. He fuelled himself with Diet Coke and coffee and teased me for ordering cranberry juice. Before he was recruited by the bank in the early 1990s, he had taught at a university; his only idea of an investment bank was based on two books he had read: Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis and Barbarians At The Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. “Traders as loud, crass, bad-mouthed, macho bufoons. The sort of guys with red braces who shout ‘buy, buy, sell, sell’ into their phones and have eating competitions.” Many outsiders still believe that these are the people occupying the top positions in big banks, he said, and taking the biggest risks. “That’s over,” he told me. “Some of the best traders are now women. Totally unassuming, cerebral and talented. Trading is no longer a balls job. It’s a brains job. To be sure, the kind of maths traders now have to be able to do is not of the wildly hard variety. But it requires real skills in that area.”

He described the basic flaw in the banking system as it has evolved over the past decades: other people’s money. Until deregulation began to liberate finance from the constraints placed on it after the last major crash in the 1930s, risky banking in the City was carried out in firms that were organised as partnerships, which were not listed on the stock exchange. The partners owned and ran the firm – and when things went wrong, they were liable. Hence the system of bonuses: if you put your personal fortune on the line and things go well, it stands to reason that you deserve a big bonus.

Because if things go the other way, you are personally liable for the losses.

Back in the days when his bank was still a partnership, the former banker had drawn on his gift for maths to build a complex financial product that he thought was very clever. “I was very new and maybe a bit cocky,” he said. “So I went over to the head of

trading and showed it to him, saying, ‘Look, we can make a lot of money with this.’ The head of trading was a partner in the traditional sense. He looked at me and replied: ‘Don’t forget, this is my money you’re messing with.’”

The problem with the way banks are now organised is not that they take risks – that is their job.

The problem with today’s banks is that those who accept the risks are no longer those who get stuck with the bill.

A bank that is listed on the stock market loses control to the new owners; that is, the shareholders. When these shareholders, which can include insurers, wealthy dynasties or pension funds, start demanding ever greater profits, then greater profits are what you have to deliver. In 2007, in an inadvertent moment of candour, the then CEO of the megabank Citigroup, Charles O Prince, summarised this relationship: “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”

This dynamic became all the more dangerous as globalisation began to create a single market for finance. Not only were partnerships allowed to be listed on the stock exchange or taken over by a publicly listed bank, they were also allowed to go on a global shopping spree. Wave after wave of mergers and acquisitions meant banks could generate higher profits than the GDPs of their host countries, resulting in the institutions that we now know as “too big to fail” – so big that if they go bust, they can bring down the system with them. When excessive risk turns sour, it’s the taxpayer who suffers.

In a functioning free market system, incompe- 53 tence and recklessness are punished by failure and bankruptcy. But there is currently no functioning free market at the centre of the global free market system. I heard City workers scoff at the employees of banks that cannot be allowed to fail – calling portfolio.

portfolio.

The penalty should land on the same head as the bonus, meaning nobody should should have more reasons to lie awake at night than the bankers themselves

them overpaid civil servants who play a game they cannot lose. Risk-taking at a bank that will always be saved, they said, is like playing Russian roulette with someone else’s head.

In the old days, veterans told me, there was an office party almost every Friday: celebrating the anniversary of someone who had stayed with the firm for 20 years or longer. That is all over now, and in its place has come a hire-and-fire culture characterised by an absence of loyalty on either side. Employment in the City is now a purely transactional affair. It is exceedingly rare to find people who have stayed with the same bank for their entire career.

Many of the insiders I spoke to had stories about abrupt sackings: you get a call from a colleague, saying: “Look, could you do me a favour and get my coat and bag?” She is standing outside with a blocked security pass. One morning, you swipe your pass only to hear a beep and find your entrance barred. You turn to the receptionist who says, after a glance at her computer screen, “Would you please have a seat over there until somebody comes to fetch you?”

In the City, sudden dismissals of this kind have a name: “executions”. Add to these the quarterly “waves” when headquarters decides to reduce headcount and a certain percentage of staff worldwide are given the sack, all on one day. Some banks operate a “cull”. Every year, prestigious banks such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan routinely fire their least profitable staff. “When the cull comes...” people would say, or: “Oh yes, we cull.”

“When you can be out of the door in five minutes, your horizon becomes five minutes,” one City worker told me. Another asked: “Why would I treat my bank any better than my bank treats me?”

If the threat of being culled influenced bankers’ behaviour through fear, there were also powerful motivations. Deregulation has allowed perverse incentives into the very fabric of global finance.

People are faced with immense temptations to take risks with their bank’s capital or reputation, knowing that if they don’t act on them, their colleague across the desk will.

Before the deregulation of the ’80s and ’90s, the City was far from perfect: it was a snobbish, antisemitic and misogynistic place. But the City – and Wall Street – of old was a world that Gus Levy, head of Goldman Sachs in the ’70s, famously described as “long term greedy”; you made money 54 with your client and your firm. Because partners were personally liable, they had an interest in keeping their firm on a manageable scale and making sure their employees told them of any risks. In a few decades, this system has evolved into one that Levy called “short term greedy”; you make money

at the expense of the client, of the bank, of the shareholder or of the taxpayer. This did not happen because bankers suddenly became evil, but because the incentives fundamentally changed.

Until the mid-’80s, the London Stock Exchange’s motto was dictum meum pactum, “my word is my bond”. These days the governing principle is caveat emptor, or “buyer beware” – it is effectively up to the professional investor to figure out what the bank is offering. As one builder of complex financial products explained to me: “You have got to read the small print.You need to bring in a lawyer who explains it to you before you buy these things.”

Perhaps the most terrifying interview of all the 200 I recorded was with a senior regulator. It was not only what he said but how he said it: as if the status quo was simply unassailable. Ultimately, he explained, regulators – the government agencies that ensure the financial sector is safe and compliant – rely on self-declaration; what is presented by a bank’s internal management. The trouble, he said with a calm smile, is that a bank’s internal management often doesn’t know what’s going on because banks today are so vast and complex. He did not think he had ever been deliberately lied to, although he acknowledged that, obviously, he couldn’t know for sure. “The real threat is not a bank’s management hiding things from us, it’s the management not knowing themselves what the risks are.”

crash course

He talked about the culture of fear and how people are not managing their actions for the benefit of their bank. Instead, “they are managing their career”. He believed that the crash had been more “cock-up than conspiracy”. Bank management is in conflict, he pointed out: “What is good for the long term of the bank or the country may not be what is best for their own short-term career or bonus.”

If the problem with finance is perverse incentives, then the insistence on greed as the cause for the crash is part of the problem. But if you blame the crash on character flaws in individuals you imply that the system itself is fine, all we need to do is to smoke out the crooks, the gambling addicts, the psychopaths. Human beings always have at least some scope for choice, hence the differences in culture between banks. Still, human behaviour is largely determined by incentives, and in the current set-up, these are sending individual bankers, desks or divisions within banks – as well as the banks themselves – in the wrong direction.

How hard would it be to change those incentives? From the viewpoint of those I interviewed, not hard at all. First of all, banks could be chopped up into units that can safely go bust – meaning they could never blackmail us again. Banks should not have multiple activities going on under one roof

Deregulation has allowed perverse incentives into the very fabric of global finance

Protests in the wake of the financial crash and subsequent bailouts

with inherent conflicts of interest. Banks should not be allowed to build, sell or own overly complex financial products – clients should be able to comprehend what they buy and investors understand the balance sheet. Finally, the penalty should land on the same head as the bonus, meaning nobody should have more reason to lie awake at night worrying over the risks to the bank’s capital or reputation than the bankers themselves. You might expect all major political parties to have come out by now with their vision of a stable and productive financial sector. But this is not what has happened.

Not that there has been no reform. Banks are taxed when they get beyond a certain size, for example, and all banks must now finance a larger part of their risks with equity rather than borrowed money. American banks are banned from using their own capital to speculate and invest in the markets, and the European commission, or national governments, have forced a few banks to shrink or sell off their investment bank activities – the Dutch bank ING, for example, was told to sell off its insurance arm, Nationale Nederlanden.

But change has been largely cosmetic, leaving the sector’s basic architecture intact. If a bank collapses, the new European banking union – set up in 2012 to transfer banking policy from a national to a European level – is meant to step in and wind it down in an orderly fashion. But who is propping up that European banking union, if several banks should fail at the same time? The taxpayer. A bonus cap in banking was introduced by the EU, so instead of paying widely publicised million-pound bonuses, banks now simply offer higher salaries.

Virtually all big banks have never allowed staff to talk openly about what went wrong before 2008 and why. The code of silence remains intact. The banks have not sacked the accountancy firms or credit rating agencies that failed to raise the alarm over the erroneous or misleading items on their balance sheets. Banks have certainly not joined hands to fight for a globally enforced increase in capital buffers (the minimum capital they are required to hold), which could help them absorb and survive severe losses. Indeed, they have spent millions lobbying to keep any increase in buffers as low as possible.

“Back to business as usual.” This is how many interviewees described the post-crash atmosphere in the City. As the senior regulator put it with chill- 55 ing equanimity: “Is the sector fixed, after the crisis?

I don’t think so.” What we have now, he added, is “what you get with free-market capitalism – consolidation of all wealth into fewer and fewer banks, which end up dividing up the market as a cartel.” portfolio.

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hen it comes to global finance, the most startling news isn’t news at all; the important facts have been known for a long time among insiders. The problem goes much deeper: the sector has become immune to exposure.

“If I had a million pounds for every time I have heard a possible reform opposed because ‘it wouldn’t have prevented Northern Rock or Lehman Brothers going bust’, I might now have enough money to bail out a bank,” the Financial Times columnist John Kay wrote in 2013. “The objective of reform is not to prevent Northern Rock or Lehman going bust… The problem revealed by the 2007-08 crisis was not that some financial services companies collapsed, but that there was no means of handling their failure without endangering the entire global financial system.”

Only last year Andrew Haldane, chief economist at the Bank Of England, told the German magazine Der Spiegel that the balances of the big banks are “the blackest of black holes”. Haldane is responsible for the stability of the financial sector as a whole. He knowingly told a journalist that he couldn’t possibly have an idea of what the banks have on their books. And? Nothing happened.

It made sense in 2008 for those in the know not to deepen the panic by talking about it. Indeed, one of the most powerful figures in the EU in 2008, the almost supernaturally level-headed Herman van Rompuy, waited until 2014 to acknowledge in an interview that he had seen the system come within “a few millimetres of total implosion”.

But because the general public was left in the dark, there was never enough political capital to take on the banks. Compare this to the 1930s in the US, when the crash was allowed to play out, giving Franklin D Roosevelt the chance to bring in simple and strong new laws that kept the financial sector healthy for many decades – until Reagan and Thatcher undid one part, and Clinton and Blair the other.

Tony Blair is now making a reported £2.5 million a year as adviser to JP Morgan, while the former US Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton have been paid upwards of $100,000 a speech to address small audiences at global banks. It is tempting to see corruption in all this, but it seems more likely that, over the past decades, politicians as well as regulators have come to identify them56 selves with the financial sector they are supposed to be regulating. The term here is “cognitive capture”, a concept popularised by the economist and former Financial Times columnist Willem Buiter, who described it as over-identification between the regulator and the regulated – or “excess sensitivity portfolio.

crash course

Protesters set fire to a government building, torch cars and smash bank windows in Rome in the worst violence of the worldwide demonstrations against corporate greed and government cutbacks

of the Fed to financial market and financial sector concerns and fears”.

With corruption, you are given money to do something you would not have done otherwise.

Capture is more subtle and no longer requires a transfer of funds – since the politician, academic or regulator has started to believe that the world works in the way that bankers say it does. Sadly, Willem Buiter never wrote a definitive account of capture; he no longer works in academia and journalism. He has moved to the megabank Citigroup.

The European commission president, JeanClaude Juncker, memorably said in 2013 that European politicians know very well what needs to be done to save the economy. They just don’t know how to get elected after doing it. A similar point could be made about the major parties in this country: they know very well what needs to be done to make finance safe again. They just don’t know where their campaign donations and second careers are going to come from once they have done it.

Still, the complicity of mainstream politicians is not the whole story. Finance today is global, while democratically legitimate politics operates on a national level. Banks can play off one country or block of countries against the other, threatening to pack up and leave if a piece of regulation should be introduced that doesn’t agree with them. And they do, shamelessly. “OK, let us assume our country takes on its financial sector,” a mainstream European politician told me. “In that case, our banks and financial firms simply move elsewhere, meaning we will have lost our voice in international forums. Meanwhile, globally, nothing has changed.”

This then opens up the most difficult question of all: how is the global financial sector to be brought back under control if there is no global political authority capable of challenging it?

Over seven years after the collapse of Lehman 57 Brothers, it is often said that nothing was learned from the crash. This is too optimistic. The big banks have surely drawn a lesson from the crash and its aftermath: that in the end there is very little they will not get away with. portfolio.

A new chapter for saffron

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iranian saffron

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affron, an ancient medicinal plant and the most expensive of spices, has always had a magical power. Cleopatra took saffron-infused baths to enhance her allure. Alexander The Great used it to heal the wounds of battle.

Many Iranians believe that in its pure form, saffron works as an antioxidant, an antidepressant and a culinary weapon against Alzheimer’s, cancer and degeneration of the eyes.

In Iran, which produces more than 80 per cent of the 250 tons produced worldwide each year, saffron is omnipresent, in stews, kebabs, rice dishes, sweets. A recent visit to a Tehran supermarket turned up at least a dozen saffron-infused products, including cotton candy, rock sugar to sweeten tea and sohan, a traditional saffron brittle toffee.

It is often said that saffron is worth its weight in gold because it is so difficult and labour-intensive to cultivate and harvest. For several weeks every fall, the crocus sativus flower blooms.

At that moment, saffron producers throw themselves into the harvest. They pick the flowers early in the morning, and on the same day gently tease the bright red, three-filament stigma from each flower and dry them. It takes about 150,000 flowers to produce a kilo of saffron.

Little wonder, then, that the precious powder has spawned a trade rife with the kind of deceptions and distortions typical of traffic in gems or illicit drugs: cheap substitutes, diluted shipments, false labelling. Today, a battle over the future of the ‘gold of cuisine’ is underway, as its world is transformed by speculation and market upheaval.

Several scientists and saffron experts have banded together to form a movement they call “Saffronomics”. Their mission is threefold: to improve saffron production and marketing; to determine its purity and place of origin; and to impose order on an unregulated market.

At a global conference of Saffronomics in Almagro, Spain, last September, much of the discussion revolved around the huge volume of fake saffron in circulation. “The fraud problem is immense,” JS Heslop-Harrison, a genetics professor at the University Of Leicester, said in an interview. “The use of fakes means people do not realise the special taste and aroma of real saffron.”

The turbulence in the saffron market has intensified. The much-anticipated lifting of international financial sanctions against Iran after the nuclear accord last spring has led to brisk saffron speculation inside Iran (saffron is several times cheaper in Iran than in Europe, where the retail price can soar to 20,000 euros a kilo, or about $10,000 a pound). portfolio.

Harvesting the stigmas of the Crocus plants, which are the source of saffron

The retail price can soar to 20,000 euros a kilo, or about $10,000 a pound

In the shop Akbar Faramars has run for 20 years in the spice bazaar here in Isfahan, he sells dried fruits, herbs and spices, including wild mint, black violets, sour orange flowers and saffron – in slim 4.608-gram red packets trimmed in gold, for $11 each. Red Gold Of Iran, they say in English.

“Since spring, the price has increased 30 per cent,” Faramars said. “People who have money are interfering with the market. They have bought a lot and are hoarding it.”

In Spain, a major saffron exporter, the market has been disrupted. The country was once a big producer, but has long imported most of its saffron from Iran, then re-exported it as Spanish. But in late 2014, the European Union began cracking down on the illegal relabelling of all sorts of products, including saffron.

In recent years, Afghanistan has begun producing saffron. In an effort to woo Afghan farmers from opium cultivation, non-governmental organisations have set up crocus-growing cooperatives there. There is also a mini-revival of saffron production in countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo and Austria.

For Iranians, there is only one source: Iran.

They are convinced that their native terroir – that elusive blend of soil, topography, climate and water – is what makes the crocus fields in the Khorasan region in north-eastern Iran so special.

In Tehran, Fereshteh Farhi and her brother Farhad have kept alive the ritual of packaging and distributing saffron to friends and family every year.

The Sheybani family, on their mother’s side, has produced prized saffron on a farm near Birjand

iranian saffron

Above: Saffron and saffron-based products at Thiercelin, a spice store, in Paris Right: A woman holds a stigma of Crocus to separate Sativus, the saffron crocus, during the saffron harvest

in south Khorasan for generations. Every year the Farhis’ mother, Effat Sheybani, would receive a kilog or two of saffron from the farm. She used a scale with tiny weights to measure it, then packaged it in unadorned, sealed plastic bags.

The family has a tradition of cutting the pistils as long as possible to retain the pale yellow stem called dashte. The yellow stem adds perfume to a cooked dish while the red pistils give flavor, the family says.

Packaging saffron in long red-yellow strands is a traditional way to prove that it has not been tampered with.

“They tell you, don’t ever buy saffron that has yellow because it adds weight and nothing else,” said Farideh Farhi, their sister and a scholar of Iran who lives in Hawaii. “But someone I trust told me once that the yellow gives the saffron more scent. I believe that.”

There is a divide in the family about the best way to grind saffron. Farideh insists it has to be done as finely as possible with a mortar and pestle.

Her sister, Fereshteh, a microbiologist, swears by a small electric coffee grinder.

Grinding is a ritual. A newspaper is laid on the counter to ensure that no saffron is wasted. The strands are put in the electric grinder with a piece of a sugar cube to add friction. The fine powder can be kept in sealed containers for years.

The Farhis have their own rules about handling saffron: Never put it in the freezer. Keep it sealed and out of the light. Do not let it spill – saffron is a powerful dye and hard to remove. And be respectful: do not use too much, as it is too precious to waste. Besides, Iranian legend has it that you can die of laughter if you consume too much.

Isfahan

Men with automatic rifles burst into the family’s plant hoping to steal the stash

Birjand

In Paris, Jean Thiercelin, whose family has been producing, buying, packaging and selling saffron since 1809, shares that feeling of respect. In their shop at the edge of the Marais district, the saffronbased products include vinegar, mustard, syrup and caramels. Thiercelin sells tiny amounts (one gram) of the finest Iranian saffron in small glass bottles, the three pistils still attached, for 13.90 euros, or about $15.

The saffron is so special that in 2008, three men with automatic rifles burst into the family’s plant in Combs-la-Ville hoping to steal the stash. 61 Thiercelin’s wife was wounded, but the saffron remained in the safe. “Saffron is much more expensive than cocaine,” Thiercelin said.

“So after that, we pretty much stopped talking about it.” portfolio.

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bitcoin woes

A Bitcoin Believer’s crisis of fAith Real-world problems facing the virtual currency.

Words: Nathaniel Popper 63

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The current dispute, though, is a reminder that ike Hearn, a British computer the bitcoin software – like all computer code – is programmer, holed up in his twoan evolving product of the human mind, and its bedroom apartment in Zurich over deployment is vulnerable to human frailties and several days and nights in January, divergent ideals. writing a cri de coeur.

There may yet be a middle ground on the quesTwo years ago, Hearn quit a cushy programtion that began the fight, but for the moment the ming job at Google’s Swiss headquarters to devote sides are deadlocked, and that has left the bitcoin himself full time to what was his great passion: the software – and the virtual currency itself – in a state virtual currency bitcoin. He was one of a handful of limbo. Hearn is convinced that the stalemate will of developers around the world dedicated to mainsoon make it hard to complete even simple transactaining the basic software that governs both the tions and will eventually drive away users and lead creation of new bitcoins and the network on which to a price collapse. the financial transactions take place.

Gavin Andresen, a close collaborator of Hearn’s But a nasty fight has torn apart the small brothand one of the longest-standing contributors to the erhood of bitcoin developers and raised questions bitcoin software, said the dispute was likely to cause about the survival of the virtual currency. Hearn disruptions in the short term, but he disagrees with became so disillusioned that in December he sold the notion that it will damage bitcoin’s long-term the few hundred bitcoins he had left and quietly prospects. Other bitcoin leaders have expressed a took a job at a start-up. similar sentiment, and investors have been inclined The impassioned blog post he was working on to believe them: The price of a bitcoin has actually was an announcement that he was leaving bitcoin risen in recent months, to about $430. behind entirely: “Bitcoin has gone from being a transparent and open community to one that is Some of Hearn’s allies in the battle are hoping dominated by rampant censorship and attacks on the deadlock can be broken if the largest bitbitcoiners by other bitcoiners.” coin companies get behind something like Bitcoin The dispute – which grew out of a question Classic, a new version of the basic bitcoin software about the number of transactions the bitcoin netthat was announced in January and aims to expand work can handle – may sound like something of the network’s capacity while also introducing new interest only to the most die-hard techies. But it standards of governance. has exposed fundamental differences about the But Hearn is convinced it is already too late. basic aims of the bitcoin project and how online Hearn was one of the first serious programmers communities should be governed. The two to take an interest in bitcoin, back in April “Bitcoin has gone from camps have broadly painted each other as, 2009, just a few months after its mysterion one side, populists who are focused on ous founder, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, being a transparent and expanding bitcoin’s commercial potential let it loose in the world. open community to one and, on the other side, elitists who are more Like many of the programmers who that is dominated by concerned with protecting its status as a took an early interest, Hearn admired the rampant censorship” radical challenger to existing currencies. rule-bound nature of the system. Only 21 The divide has led over the last six million bitcoins would ever be created. months to death threats against bitcoin And the distribution of new bitcoins was developers and hacking attacks that have clearly laid out, relying on mathematical taken down internet providers. The sense of betrayalgorithms that left no room for human meddling. al is strong on both sides. One of Hearn’s primary Satoshi had written the software containing antagonists, a bearded California-based programthese rules, but after it was released, anyone could mer named Gregory Maxwell, also appears to have see the code and make changes. The people downpulled back from his work on bitcoin after receiving loading this open-source software essentially voted anonymous death threats. on which changes to accept based on which version Part of the basic appeal of bitcoin has been its of the software they chose to use. If Satoshi propromise to provide a more reliable and trustworthy posed changes that they didn’t like, they didn’t have alternative to existing currencies and financial netto download and run it.

64 works. Unlike the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, It took a while for bitcoin to catch on, but by late institutions that are managed by humans, bitcoin 2010, when Hearn started contributing to the code, was supposed to rest on the infallible logic of math the currency had begun developing a passionate and computer code. In this system, programmers following. like Hearn, who often volunteered their expertise Hearn joined a small but growing group of voland effort, were viewed as neutral technicians. unteers who worked on the basic bitcoin software PORTFOLIO.

BITCOIN WOES

Hearn retorted that the technical issue wasn’t such a big deal. More important, he argued, was that bitcoin needed to succeed first as a cheaper, faster payment network, like PayPal or Visa.

In the past, the leader of the bitcoin software project, Andresen, would have stepped in to mediate. But Andresen stepped back from his day-today role in 2014 and gave the job of lead maintainer to another volunteer on the project, Wladimir J van der Laan, a Dutch programmer, who said he did not intend to follow Andresen’s lead.

The bonhomie began to fall apart because of the growth in the number of users and transactions

A sign displaying Bitcoins accepted is seen on the front door of a pub in Australia, as the currency becomes more widely accepted around the world

from various parts of the globe. They met in person only a handful of times, but they would talk constantly online and send emails discussing potential changes. The leader of this effort, after Satoshi bowed out in 2011, was Andresen.

The bonhomie began to fall apart last year because of what appeared to be a positive development: the continuing growth in the number of bitcoin users and transactions.

The problem was that, early on, Satoshi established a limit on the number of transactions that could be processed by the network every 10 minutes.

The cap was meant to ensure that the computers supporting the network, and processing the transactions, would not be overwhelmed. But Satoshi had suggested that the limit should be temporary.

When Hearn began pushing for changes to the core bitcoin software to allow for larger blocks of transaction data, he faced resistance. Maxwell said that larger blocks of transaction data would be harder for ordinary computers to process. The result, Maxwell warned, would be to hand control over the network to big companies that could afford powerful computers.

Hearn and Andresen ultimately decided late in the summer that the only way forward was to give the vote to the people actually using the bitcoin software. They put together their own version of the core software which they called Bitcoin XT. If a clear majority of the system’s users downloaded the software, it would become the new law of the land.

The release of Bitcoin XT was viewed by van der Laan and Maxwell as an act of betrayal.

The fight took on a new dimension when a powerful hacker distributed Bitkiller, malicious software that sought out computers that downloaded the Bitcoin XT software and overwhelmed them with traffic. Not surprisingly, this scared away many bitcoin users.

In the late fall, Maxwell and his supporters tried to engineer a compromise. They organized meetings in Montreal and Hong Kong where the leading developers met to discuss alternative ways to scale the bitcoin system. Andresen went to the first of these, where Maxwell’s allies announced their own, more gradual plan for increasing the network’s capacity. But Andresen and Hearn both felt that the recommendations didn’t go far enough.

Despite the discord, Hearn has not lost faith in all of the ideas behind bitcoin. The startup in New York where he has taken a job, R3, is developing bitcoin-like networks for banks to enable cheaper 65 and faster ways to trade assets of all sorts.

This work lacks the purity of bitcoin, but after months of sleepless nights, fretting about betrayed promises, he said, “I want to be in a professional environment again where people are grounded in some sort of business reality.”

PORTFOLIO.

ANTARCTICA

The battle

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ANTARCTICA

for Antarctica An array of countries in the race for space at the bottom of the world.

Words: Simon Romero

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n a glacier-filled island with fjords and elephant seals, Russia has built Antarctica’s first Orthodox church on a hill overlooking its research base, transporting the logs all the way from Siberia.

Less than an hour away by snowmobile, Chinese labourers have updated the Great Wall Station, a linchpin in China’s plan to operate five bases on Antarctica, complete with an indoor badminton court, domes to protect satellite stations and sleeping quarters for 150 people.

Not to be outdone, India’s futuristic new Bharathi base, built on stilts using 134 interlocking shipping containers, resembles a spaceship. Turkey and Iran have announced plans to build bases, too.

More than a century has passed since explorers raced to plant their flags at the bottom of the world, and for decades to come this continent is supposed to be protected as a scientific preserve, shielded from intrusions like military activities and mining.

But an array of countries are rushing to assert greater influence here, with an eye not just towards the day those protective treaties expire, but also for the strategic and commercial opportunities that exist right now.

“The newer players are stepping into what they view as a treasure house of resources,” said AnneMarie Brady, a scholar at New Zealand’s University Of Canterbury who specialises in Antarctic politics.

Some of the ventures focus on the Antarctic resources that are already up for grabs, like abundant sea life. China and South Korea, both of which operate state-of-the-art bases here, are ramping up their fishing of krill, the shrimplike crustaceans found in abundance in the Southern Ocean, while Russia recently thwarted efforts to create one of the world’s largest ocean sanctuaries here.

68 Some scientists are examining the potential for harvesting icebergs from Antarctica, which is estimated to have the biggest reserves of fresh water on the planet. Nations are also pressing ahead with space research and satellite projects to expand their global navigation abilities. portfolio.

“The newer players are stepping into what they view as a treasure house of resources”

Building on a Soviet-era foothold, Russia is expanding its monitoring stations for Glonass, its version of the Global Positioning System. At least three Russian stations are already operating in Antarctica, part of its effort to challenge the dominance of the American GPS, and new stations are planned for sites like the Russian base, in the shadow of the Orthodox Church Of The Holy Trinity.

Elsewhere in Antarctica, Russian researchers boast of their recent discovery of a freshwater reserve the size of Lake Ontario after drilling through kilometres of solid ice.

“You can see that we’re here to stay,” said Vladimir Cheberdak, 57, chief of the Bellingshausen Station, as he sipped tea under a portrait of Fabian

Left: Members of the Chilean navy walk back to shore in dry suits after accompanying researchers to take seawater samples Bottom: Chinese and Russian crew travel back in a snow mobile after attending a welcoming party for the arrival of a new team and the departure of another after a year at the Uruguayan Artigas Base

Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, an officer and later admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy who explored the Antarctic coast in 1820.

Antarctica’s mineral, oil and gas wealth are a longer-term prize. The treaty banning mining here – shielding coveted reserves of iron ore, coal and chromium – is expected to come up for review by 2048, and it could be challenged before then.

Researchers recently found kimberlite deposits hinting at the existence of diamonds. And while assessments vary widely, geologists estimate that Antarctica holds at least 36 billion barrels of oil and natural gas.

Beyond the Antarctic treaties, huge obstacles persist to tapping these resources, like drifting icebergs that could imperil offshore platforms. Then there is Antarctica’s remoteness, with some mineral deposits found in windswept locations on a continent that is larger than Europe and where winter temperatures hover around -55° Celsius.

But advances in technology might make Antarctica a lot more accessible three decades from now. And even before then, scientists are seeking to determine how climate change could start to reshape the access to some Antarctic regions, potentially destabilising the continent’s 69 ice sheet or depleting krill populations in the Southern Ocean.

Scholars also warn that the demand for resources in an energy-hungry world could raise pressure to renegotiate Antarctica’s treaties, possibly portfolio.

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allowing more commercial endeavours here well before the prohibitions against them expire.

The research stations on King George Island offer a glimpse into the long game on this iceblanketed continent as nations assert themselves, eroding the sway long held by countries like the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Being stationed in Antarctica involves adapting to life on the planet’s driest, windiest and coldest continent, yet each nation manages to make itself at home.

Russian priests offer regular services at the Orthodox church for the 16 or so Russian speakers who spend the winter at the base, largely polar scientists in fields like glaciology and meteorology.

Their number climbs to about 40 in the warmer summer months.

China has arguably the fastest-growing operations in Antarctica. It opened its fourth station in 2014 and is pressing ahead with plans to build a fifth. It is building its second icebreaking ship and setting up research drilling operations on an ice dome 4,091 kilometres above sea level that is one of the planet’s coldest places.

Chinese officials say the expansion in Antarctica prioritises scientific research, but they also acknowledge that concerns about “resource security” influence their moves.

Below: The Russian Bellingshausen Station in Antartica Right: A member of a German research team counting the number of penguin species and pairs as part of continuing studies Bottom: The Reverend Benjamin Maltzev in the bell room at the Church Of The Holy Trinity, a Russian Orthodox church overlooking the Russian base

As some countries expand operations in Antarctica, the United States maintains three yearround stations on the continent with more than 1,000 people during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, including those at the Amundsen-Scott Station, built in 1956 at an elevation of 2,753 metres on a plateau at the South Pole. But US researchers quietly grumble about budget restraints and having far fewer icebreakers than Russia, limiting the reach of the United States in Antarctica.

Scholars warn that Antarctica’s political flux could blur the distinction between military and civilian activities long before the continent’s treaties come up for renegotiation, especially in parts of Antarctica that are ideal for intercepting signals from satellites or re-tasking satellite systems, potentially enhancing electronic intelligence operations.

Some countries have had a hard time here. Brazil opened a research station in 1984, but it was largely destroyed by a fire that killed two people in 2012, the same year that a diesel-laden Brazilian barge sank near the base. As if that were not enough, a

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Ernesto Molina, a Chilean scientist, carrying an instrument used for analysing seawater, walks past an elephant seal pup

Brazilian C-130 Hercules military transport plane has remained stranded near the runway of Chile’s air base here since it crash-landed in 2014.

Still, Brazil’s stretch of misfortune has created opportunities for China, with a Chinese company winning the $100 million contract in 2015 to rebuild the Brazilian station.

Amid all the changes, Antarctica maintains its allure. South Korea opened its second Antarctic research base in 2014, describing it as a way to test robots developed by Korean researchers for use in extreme conditions. With Russia’s help, Belarus is preparing to build its first Antarctic base. Colombia said in 2015 that it planned to join other South American nations with bases in Antarctica.

“The old days of the Antarctic being dominated by the interests and wishes of white men from European, Australasian and North American states is over,” said Klaus Dodds, a politics scholar at the University of London who specialises in Antarctica. “The reality is that Antarctica is geopolitically contested.”

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spanish truffles

The greaT Truffle shuffle How Spain supplies France’s truffle fix. Words: Raphael Minder

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spanish truffles

O

n Saturday nights, prospective buyers gather on the outskirts of this small village, in the darkness of a parking lot next to a semi-abandoned railway station. Using flashlights, they inspect the offerings local farmers have piled in the trunks of their vehicles, then haggle over price.

It might seem an unusually clandestine way to sell produce. Then again, this market is for one of the world’s most prized foodstuffs, the black truffle.

But perhaps more surprising is that a truffle trade would be thriving here, in the arid and thinly populated hills of east-central Spain.

The black truffle, with its pungent aroma, is, after all, a mainstay of French gastronomy.

Spaniards barely eat them. Scientifically known as the Tuber melanosporum, it is even commonly known as the Périgord truffle, after the French region that long led in its production.

More than a century ago, farmers in southern France took up the harvesting of black truffles after an epidemic of aphidlike phylloxera destroyed vineyards, forcing a search for alternatives.

But France’s truffle output has collapsed over the past century, through wars and industrialisation that encouraged farmers to switch to crops with shorter production cycles. Changes in the climate – severe droughts and heat waves – have also hurt production recently.

“With the heat waves we’ve recently had, my plantation now gives next to nothing,” said JoséGabriel Sánchez, who grows truffles in Cotignac, in the southern Var department of France.

“I think climate change has literally driven us out as a truffle production area,” he added.

In 2014, France produced 56 metric tons of truffles, compared with a peak of 1,040 tons in 1904, according to historical data from the French federation of truffle growers.

At the same time, Spain’s production has been growing rapidly – to about 45 tons a year.

Luckily for the French, and others, however, Spanish cuisine rarely uses the truffle. In fact, about 95 per cent of what Spain produces is exported to France and other markets – even if some of it gets re-labelled as Périgord truffle.

“Spain is now producing what is missing in France,” said Eric Bienvenu, a French truffle broker who buys truffles from farmers to supply French restaurants.

The quality of the Spanish black truffle, he argued, is “at least as good” as that grown in France, “even if most French will of course tell you that theirs are better”.

For 2016, the regional government of Aragón, Spain, has also pledged to pay for most of a $17.5 million irrigation system that will further help truffle farmers.

“It’s evident that Spain has done in recent years a huge amount of work to raise production, which hasn’t been done in France,” said Michel Courvoisier, the French federation’s director.

The shift to Spain has been helped by a production method initially developed in France that allows a fungus to be injected into the root of a sapling. The sapling is then grown in a greenhouse before being transferred to a field.

After about three years, each tree starts producing one truffle a year, harvested between December and March.

The truffles grow a few centimetres below the ground, but within the smelling range of hunting dogs that are trained to find them by farmers, like sniffer dogs that are trained by the police.

Truffles have already become a big business here, which has also helped stem the population decline in the villages scattered around the district of Gúdar Javalambre, of which Sarrión, with its 1,100 inhabitants, is the largest.

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Portfolio EMIRATES Magazine FEBRUARY 2016

The new suites at Bupa Cromwell Hospital (Just what the doctor ordered)

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The new Royal and Presidential suites are amongst the most luxurious in the world, and offer the ultimate healthcare experience. Patients will have access to a team of dedicated VIP coordinators and 24 hour private nursing, amongst many other services.

For enquiries please ring +44 (0)7809 316 205 or email thesuites@cromwellhospital.com.

Expect the exceptional.

spanish truffles

“We’ve done everything to revive farming here and lead Europe’s truffle production, but it’s now about getting international recognition for that,” said Joaquín Olona, the official responsible for rural development within the regional government of Aragón.

The truffles have also helped diversify the population by bringing in migrant workers. Eladio Salvador Redón, the owner of a truffle farm, employs five truffle pickers, all of them Moroccan.

They spend much of their working day on their knees, digging around the roots of the trees with a trowel, wherever the dog stops and starts to scratch the soil.

“It’s a good but hard job, especially because the winter can get really cold here,” said El Mostafa Marnouch, 35, who is originally from Casablanca.

He said he earned 800 euros a month, or about $874, picking truffles.

The black truffle has a wholesale price of at least 500 euros per kilo, or about $546, according to local farmers. This has led many of them to place surveillance cameras around their fields, while also explaining why they transport and sell their truffles with some degree of secrecy.

FRANCE

Bay of Biscay

PÉRIGORD REGION

Contignac

ANDORRA

SPAIN ARAGÓN AR R

Madrid

200 Miles

Sarrión

BALEARIC ISLANDS

Mediterranean Sea ALGERIA

THE NEW YORK TIMES portfolio.

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spanish truffles

But the most sought-after truffle is the white one, grown mainly in the Piedmont region of Italy, which sells for about five times as much as the black variety.

In December 2014, a giant white tuber was auctioned by Sotheby’s, fetching $61,250. While the white truffle also has a distinct aroma, part of its appeal is its rarity: It grows only in the wild and has so far resisted scientific cultivation efforts.

Producers here estimate their district of Gúdar Javalambre now accounts for more than half of Europe’s truffle production. According to the French federation, however, Spain’s production in 2014 still slightly lagged France’s. So far this season, eastern Spain has also been hit by a particularly mild and dry winter, which is likely to delay the harvest.

In any case, contrasting data in the truffle sector is complicated because the business is “completely opaque”, said Bienvenu, the French broker. He said three-quarters of his transactions were made 76 in cash, largely because farmers did not want any billing paperwork.

In December, the regional authorities of Aragón published the first official pricing list for truffles, in part to get marketers out of the darkness of their parking lot. portfolio.

“We need to make this sector a lot more transparent,” said José Manuel Martínez Matías, an agricultural engineer who helps run an association of truffle producers.

An official pricing system, he suggested, would also encourage Spanish restaurateurs to add truffles to their menus.

“At the moment, it’s just very hard for any outsider to know how to buy truffles,” he said.

Rafael Doñate, a local producer, said the main challenge for Spanish truffle growers, however, was not necessarily opaque pricing or weather changes, but rather persuading Spaniards and chefs here to include truffles in their cuisine.

“Truffle is the missing element in Spanish gastronomy,” he said.

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Europe’s Leading Luxury Health Retreats

living

portfolio.

Long frequented by the rich and famous, Europe is setting the bar for high-end medi-spas. With holistic healing now synonymous with ultra-luxe resorts and jet-set locations, we round-up five of the best luxury retreats for rejuvenating the body, mind and soul

MARCH ISSUE 123

SHA Wellness Clinic Valencia, Spain

I

f there’s a wellness experience not on the menu here, it’s probably not worth your while. With one of the widest selections of healthy living programmes in Europe, and a focus on natural therapies and healthy eating combined with the latest advances in western medicine, it’s a metaphorical superpower in wellness experiences.

It even has its own diet. An integral part to every stay is the SHA Diet, which seeks to introduce new sustainable eating habits that rebalance the body, boosting its ability to heal itself. It’s based on the principles of macrobiotics, updated to fit today’s lifestyles and the availability of seasonal ingredients.

The Clinic Area offers medical services spanning general assessments and genetic analysis, to hair-loss treatment and traditional Chinese medicine.

The Wellness Area completes your holistic wellbeing overhaul, with beauty treatments, massage, water therapy, personal training and classes including yoga, meditation and tai chi. The four-day Sha Discovery plan is a great generalist programme, whilst more specific experiences range from antitobacco to sleep recovery.

Ninety suites, zen, mediterranean and tropical gardens, indoor and outdoor pools, a hydrotherapy circuit, putting green, tennis court, super-stylish white interiors, and oodles of large open spaces and terraces miraculously combine in perfect harmony, with views of the beautiful Bay Of Altea providing the none too shabby backdrop.

Deluxe Suites start from $298 per night on a room only basis. The four-day SHA Discovery Programme costs $1,291 including full board (excluding accommodation).

Tel. +34 966 811 199. shawellnessclinic.com

PORTFOLIO.

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living / retreats

2 VIVAMAYR, Lake Wörth, austria

Portfolio.

3 ClInIque lA PRAIRIe,

CLarens-Montreux, sWitzerLand Established in 1931, Clinique La Prairie, located a stone’s throw from Lake Geneva, has been making headlines for decades. And not only thanks to its (now sold-off) leading skincare range or its eclectic mix of celebrity clientele – names as varied as Winston Churchill and Mick Jagger are rumoured to have checked in for treatments.

Its founder, Professor Paul Niehans, was a pioneer in cellular therapy, famous for injecting fresh cells from lamb fetuses into his patients to slow down the ageing process. These days the legendary rejuvenation therapy extract is taken from lamb’s livers and administered orally, but its antiageing, immune system-boosting credentials remain as celebrated as ever.

With a focus on health, beauty and wellness as the basis of a longer, happier life, the centre offers a la carte programmes ranging from six to 13 nights, with everything from medical check-ups to weight management, rebalancing and a popular beauty programme. The immaculate facilities include a dental clinic, sleep centre and a 16,000 square metre spa, with a pool, Jacuzzi, Kneipp course and ice fountain.

Luxury rooms and suites are divided between La Residence, with the opulent charm of a 20th Century grand hotel, and The Chateau, with terraces offering panoramic views of the lake. A treasure trove of greenery surrounds the retreat, with perfectly manicured gardens, framed by the utterly dreamy silhouette of the Alps.

The six-night Revitalisation Programme, including full board in a standard room, costs from $25,000 per person. Tel: + 41 (0)21 989 33 11. laprairie.ch

Words: Hannah George

Housed in an modern five-star hotel, all shiny white brick and glass facades, VIAVMAYR wouldn’t look out of place on the boulevards of Miami. But make no mistake; this is a retreat that means business, so leave your vices at home. Located on the breathtaking shores of Lake Wörth, VIVAMAYR is at the forefront of a new generation of medical wellness retreats, and uses holistic treatment methods based on the healing of the digestive tract.

Bespoke programmes are designed by doctors trained in modern Mayr medicine, with the foundations of an alkalizing diet and detox plan. Testament to the natural anti-ageing effects and resulting brighter skin, weight-loss and increased energy, is the retreat’s clientlist of celebrity designers and high profile models.

The hotel boats a glorious pool, steam baths, saunas, a gym, and the latest beauty treatments in its spa and salon. Rooms and suites are fittingly modern and stylish, with a newly built villa boasting a private jetty.

But it’s the outstanding natural beauty of the surrounding Lake Wörth that truly makes VIVAMAYR a holistic experience. With uncontaminated air and mineral-rich waters, swimming, rowing or simply strolling heal the soul to match your new and 80 improved body.

Comfort Rooms from $244 per night, including breakfast.

The holistic seven-day ‘Vvamayr Special Package’ costs from $2,701 per person, including accommodation, a choice of medical treatments and access to all spa facilities.

Tel: +43 (0) 4273 311 170 / viva-mayr.com

march issue 123

4 La RéseRve RamatueLLe HoteL & spa

Côte d’Azur, FrAnCe Total relaxation is the name of the game at La Reserve Ramatuelle, and the rules are on your terms. A visit might simply involve a leisurely stay high up in the hills of the exclusive hotel or villas, with relaxation revolving around the dazzling views of the Mediterranean, and avoiding the temptations of neighbouring St Tropez.

The chic ambience, neutral interiors and sheer beauty of the surrounding nature are a tonic in themselves, but it’s the spa programmes that provide the ice and slice. Offering a selection of three to six-day plans to achieve anything from anti-ageing to deep relaxation, slimming or toning, most combine an effective blend of treatments, exercise and healthy eating.

Meals here aren’t the typical serving of lackluster greens. Cuisine may be light but it comes with Mediterranean flavour and a Michelin Star, courtesy of La Voile restaurant and chef Eric Canino, with his philosophy of eating better whilst preserving the pleasure of living well.

Programmes are based on the medical expertise of the Nescens brand, with the ‘Better Ageing Exclusive Experience’ proving popular as well as the Nescens Bootcamp. The five-day fitness-boosting plan combines Nordic walking on coastal paths and a series of spa treatments including a muscular awakening session, balneotherapy and a better-ageing body massage.

Superior Rooms cost from €500 per night, including breakfast. The Niscens Bootcamp costs from €2,900 per day, excluding accommodation.

Tel +33 (0)4 94 44 94 44 / lareserve-ramatuelle.com

Cuisine may be light but it comes with Mediterranean flavour and a Michelin Star, courtesy of La Voile restaurant

5 GRand ResoRt Bad RaGaz, SwitzerLAnd The healing powers of Tamina gorge, Europe’s most abundant thermal source, were first discovered in the 16th Century, when people would lower themselves in via ropes, to reap the benefits of its balanced minerals and body temperature (36.5°C) water. In 2016 no ropes are required, since the same water now fills the Thermal Spa at Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, and provides the foundation for the luxury wellbeing and medical resort’s healing experience.

Bad Ragaz undoubtedly has the medical credentials, with diagnostic, preventive and rehabilitation services in a fully-fledged medical clinic, which even houses the Swiss Olympic Medical Centre and a check-up specially designed for sportsmen.

But it’s the spa experience that stands head and (well-honed) shoulders above similar resorts. Spread over 18,000 square metres, facilities include a ‘water world’ with three thermal pools, a Finnish sauna, the world’s first herbal steam bath embellished with Swarovski crystals, an ice cave and pool, water beds, a winter garden relaxation lounge, an even a ‘cuddle lounge’ for couples.

There’s also more entertainment than expected, with concerts, exhibitions, fireside lectures, two golf courses and a casino. Subsequently, Bad Ragaz puts the razzamatazz into health retreats, so if you’re looking for a wellbeing break with a lively resort feel, this could 81 be the one for you.

Comfort Rooms start from $371 per night, on a room only basis. The two-night ‘Fit For Spring’ package includes a beauty treatment and bespoke diet plan, and costs from €450 per person per night in a double room.

Tel. +41 81 303 30 30 / resortragaz.ch Portfolio.

living / style

what to pack ...for crisp weather in Boston, and beyond

Average temp

4°c

London Paris Milan Nice

also wear in...

7 °C 8 °C 9 °C 11 °C

march

boston

Avg. hours of sun: six

additional info And if you have a spare afternoon...

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Portfolio.

harvard university tours It’s not only one of the great universities (although five others are ranked higher), it’s also the birthplace of fashion styles and Facebook and where presidents, nobel prize winners and

inventors graduated.

You can have a free tour of the university, and no pre-registration is required. Just be one of the first 15 to turn up and you’ll get a look around one of the most iconic places on Earth. harvard.edu

MARCH ISSUE 123

2

1

ACCESSORIES

Maison Martin Margiela Replica cologne $95

4

CITY LOOK

3

Smythson notebook $75

6 5

Loake brogues $283

83 1. Loro Piana blazer $2,995 2. Begg & Co cashmere scarf $95 3. Thomas Pink stripe shirt $195 4. Thom Browne cashmere sweater $1,500 5. Belt by Anderson’s $205 6. Coach pebbled leather explorer bag $695

Alexander McQueen skull and silver sword tie clip $235

PORTFOLIO.

living / style

what to pack ...for Cape Town, and beyond

Average temp

19°c

15 °C 22 °C 26 °C 23 °C Las Vegas Buenos Aires Rio Dubai

also wear in...

march

cape town

Avg. hours of sun: nine

additional info And if you can get a reservation...

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Portfolio.

the test kitchen Generally regarded as the best restaurant not only in Cape Town or South Africa, but the entire continent. Latin cuisine with a South African touch created by a British chef, this is a near perfect mix of ideas, ingredients and

execution. Five- and ninecourse tasting menus at dinner as well as a five-course and à la carte menu at lunch, and the price (for what you get) is incredibly low compared to pretty much anywhere else on earth. thetestkitchen.co.za

march issue 123

accessories

1

2

Kate Spade kite tote bag $414 3

Miu Miu crystal-embellished sunglasses $390

5 6

Monica Vinader goldplated onyx necklace $200

4

85 Burberry London cashmere keychain $250

1. T by Alexander Wang dress $217 2. Orlebar Brown aloha top $196 3. Moschino printed cotton-blend skirt $825 4. Chloe espadrille wedge sandals $625 5. Lanvin tassel cord belt $685 6. Anya Hindmarch wink leather-trimmed canvas tote $685

Portfolio.

march issue 123

living / investment

Hermès Birkin bag

investment piece

The hugely sought-after iconic all-rounder

1

Interior in another quintessential Hermès colour, Blue Jean

2

Handcrafted by Hermès staff, who produce around 15 bags per month

4

Distinct leatherwork with foldover flap around the handles

3

Palladium hardware

5

Padlock and key with leather cover

6

Pebble effect leather in Hèrmes orange.

This shed is called Potiron

The Hermès Birkin bag is one of the true, timeless items. Hand-made, limited in number and no two are identical. They don’t come cheap,

86 however, with prices between $10,000 and $150,000 depending on the materaials used on that particular model. The bag pictured, for

example, is up for auction at Christie’s and is expected to fetch between $10,000 and $15,000. But according to a study by Forbes, the value of a Birkin bag holds up in the pre-owned market and “typically fetches between 80 per cent and 120 per cent of what the previous owner paid for it. In contrast, a lesser brand handbag in the same condition can be resold for only about 10 per cent of what the original owner spent”. We’re not suggesting going long on Birkin bags to make money, but merely it’s a fine indication that over three decades on from their introduction the demand for these bags hasn’t diminished. They defy fashion trends and will almost never go out of style.

Portfolio.

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VINTAGE 2006

The Power of Creation

living / stay

Vienna, Schubertring 5-7, 1010

Price From $390 per night

Ritzcarlton.com/ Vienna

 VIE

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Portfolio.

V

ienna is a city of palaces.

So the fact that The RitzCarlton, arguably the bestlocated and most luxurious hotel in the city, is made up of four of them shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Only, this hotel is full of surprises, mainly due to its wonderful mélange of old and new, which is largely at the root of its immense appeal.

The four historic palaces that were eventually joined together date back to the 19th Century and the heyday of Viennese architecture, incorporating stylistic influences of Renaissance and Baroque.

Ahead of the hotel’s opening in 2012, the German-based design-team were charged with maintaining the charm and protected features of the palaces, whilst creating an elegant, contemporary hotel with stylish interiors and all the mod cons so demanded by the luxury traveller.

Standout features were inspired by the hotel’s unique location on the iconic Ringstrasse (Ring Boulevard), nestled in the historic heart of the city, lined

by Austria’s most important buildings, including the Vienna State Opera, Imperial Palace and Parliament. The city’s longstanding equine tradition (horse

The hotel is made up of four palaces that have been joined together

carriages called ‘Fiaker’ still ride along the Ring) is depicted by a series of strikingly beautiful paintings as you enter the lobby.

The 202 guest rooms and suites mesh noble fabrics, precious wood finishes and Renaissance-style windows with underfloor heating, Asprey amenities and bathroom doors displaying canvases of abstract art, specially created by an anonymous local artist. A further unseen treasure comes courtesy of a hidden library in the 190 square metre Presidential Suite, with floorto-ceiling bookshelves bearing literary works in different languages. Books include subjects varying from art history, design

Words: Hannah George

THe riTZ-cArLTON

Where to stay

march issue 123 and music, to autobiographies and a range of novels by local authors. Specific requests can even be made to the hotel’s ‘literary specialist’ on reserving the suite.

And so to the roof, and the hotel’s showstopping, hotspot of a bar, Atmosphere Rooftop Lounge. Frequented by the wellheeled Viennese, clever blue lighting makes the beautiful look even more so, almost (but not quite) competing with sprawling views of the city, stretching from St Stephan’s Cathedral to Karlskirche. It’s open from late spring when the weather starts to warm, and towards the end of the year transforms into Vienna’s highest market.

in the hotel

palais GutMaNN

Dstrikt stands out from your average hotel steakhouse by providing a unique sense of place. And exceptional cheesecake.

Austrian beef is cooked on a charcoal grill and finished with chestnut brown salt from the Saltzburg mines. The wine list is dominated by the best of Austria’s homegrown grapes, whilst beers herald from local microbreweries.

Again avoiding the realms of cliché, Melounge manages to pull it out of the proverbial bag with an a-typical afternoon tea. The highlights are hot Criollo chocolate, produced from the highest quality (and most expensive) cacao beans around, served

by Austria’s first chocolate sommelier, and an ingenious jasmine-infused Cosmopolitan, poured from an old-fashioned teapot with ‘steam’ originating from a bed of dry ice.

Like the contents of your teacup and the city itself, The Ritz-Carlton, Vienna is a genuine treat, and a master at merging the best of the old with the shiny and new.

Affectionately referred to by the staff as the museum, Palais Gutmann is the part of the hotel that retains most of its original features, including a historical marble staircase, a handcrafted wooden fireplace and an impressive ceiling fresco.

spa

Inspired by the rose garden of Vienna’s Empress Sisi, the hotel’s ESPA offers a relaxing Imperial Rose Ritual. The treatment uses rose geranium and sweet orange oils and includes a body scrub and hot stone massage.

extra touch

The longest pool in Vienna at 18 metres, the highlight of a dip, or rather a dunk, is the underwater classical music from some of the Viennese greats, including Mozart and Beethoven.

Symphonised swimming, anyone?

places of interest in the area eat

visit

shop

culture

Crammed with more than 120 stalls, Naschmarkt is deservedly Vienna’s most legendary food market. It’s an international melting pot of tastes and aromas, with the highlight being the Viennese classics, including the ubiquitous and delicious apfelstrudel and wiener schnitzel. The real taste of Vienna.

Exploring Vienna’s wineries is part of the cultural experience and Mayer Am Pfarrplatz in Heiligenstadt has been producing some of the best since 1683. It was also the former home of Beethoven, (he is believed to have written his famous Symphony No 9 here), and boasts a great restaurant. Ideal for a long lunch.

Augarten is the renowned 300-yearold porcelain manufacturer, museum and store, located in Vienna’s oldest Baroque garden. Sip from a teacup crafted in the 1800s, and peruse the impressive displays of products from traditional vases and chintzy figurines to contemporary tableware and state-of-the-art speakers.

For art and architecture in one, head to the Belvedere, home to two Baroque palaces that house the greatest collection of Austrian art, including Monet, van Gogh and Gustav Klint’s famous The Kiss. If the weather permits, the perfectly manicured gardens are also more than worth a wander.

Portfolio.

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march living / column

issue 123

The 12 things that restaurants must stop doing

By Jay Rayner My dentist tells me that I grind my teeth at night. He says this is a very bad thing and needs to be remedied. Apparently the problem is tension, brought on by stress.

Clearly I need less stress in my life. To make this happen I have decided to use this column to address all the things about restaurants that I truly hate; the atrocities I hope to see disappear. These things may sound minor, but together they amount to a hurricane of tooth-blunting fury. My ability to chew meat properly depends upon all of it being dealt with.

Please stop taking my order without a notebook. I don’t know you. I don’t know whether you are Francesco the Famous Memory Man, or can now barely recall your own name. I don’t trust you to remember what I ordered.

Write it down.

All restaurants must install big enough tables to accommodate their small-plate-sharing menus.

The small plates menu was your idea, not mine. Most tables can’t manage more than four dishes, and you want us to order seven.

And while we’re at it, please stop sending dishes out “when they’re ready”.

I am tired of not being able to remember if everything I ordered has been delivered.

I’m bored with the potatoes arriving before the steak, and the steak arriving before the salad. It’s convenient for the kitchen. It’s not convenient for me. Stop it.

Stop it with granola too. Apart from at breakfast. Granola at breakfast is OK, but if I ever see it on a main course again, I shall open my mouth and point at my ground down molars. It’s ugly in there. Forget the jaws of hell. These are the jaws of Rayner.

Also, please sort out the lighting. I am old. I dislike having to power up the torch on my phone to read the menu.

What is it with taking the bread plate away at the end of the starters? No restaurateur has ever explained to me why that happens, but still you do it. And while I’m on bread: unsalted butter? I mean, really? I don’t want a mouthful of flavourless grease with my bread. You don’t want people in your restaurant who dislike salted butter. They have feeble, over-sensitive palates. They will hate your food. And if they don’t, I will.

Oh, and put salt and pepper on the table. Who do you think you are? Nico bloody Ladenis?

Please stop putting the pages of wine lists inside plastic sleeves. It’s cheap and feels nasty. How much does it cost to reprint them?

And list bottles in price order from cheapest upwards. I love learning about the wines of the world, but not when I’m knackered and just want a drink. I don’t like having to hunt for something in my budget.

And if I tell you I’ll fill the wine glass myself I mean it. Tell your colleagues so I don’t have to keep repeating myself. Don’t you dare move my bottle to a table at the far end of the room. It’s mine. I paid for it.

I’ll do with it as I like.

And finally, don’t you ever, ever, ever again give the bill to the only person on the table who happens to possess testicles. You have no idea who’s paying for dinner. Put the bill in the middle of that table and walk away.

There. I’m done. And you know what?

My teeth feel better already.

“Please stop sending out dishes ‘when they’re ready’.

It’s convenient for the kitchen, but not convenient for me”

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Jay Rayner is a restaurant critic and a novelist.

Portfolio.

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