Tag Archives: In Conversation With

Published: Friday August 19 2016Caran d'Ache, Switzerland’s manufacturer of pencils, fine-arts materials and luxury writing instruments, continues to innovate and expand globally under the leadership of a fourth-generation member of the family that runs it‘People write less in everyday life, yet everyone has a pen or pencil on their desk,’ says Carole Hübscher, Chairwoman of the company. ‘A nice pen has become an essential accessory for many men, just like a Swiss watch – a sign of status....

Published: Monday August 15 2016With almost 300 years of history, Rémy Martin is one of the world’s leading cognacs, selling 24 million bottles a year to consumers in Europe, North America and Asia. In 1990–91, it joined forces with a much younger premium spirit — the orange-flavoured liqueur first sold by the Cointreau brothers in 1875. The merged Rémy Cointreau group also owns a range of other spirits, including Mount Gay rum, Metaxa brandy and Bruichladdich Scotch whisky.Rémy Martin dates...

Published: Wednesday August 10 2016Riedel, the 260-year-old Austrian family-owned company makes a wide range of differently shaped glasses which enhance the taste of the most popular grape varieties, according to an 11th generation descendant of the founderWhen Maximilian J. Riedel’s grandfather produced the first wine-specific glass, some connoisseurs doubted whether it would make much difference to the taste of the wines they drunk. Wine glasses then were smaller than today’s, made of cut...

Published: Thursday May 12 2016 Much ink has been spilled in the financial press in recent years over the parlous financial state of certain Eurozone countries, and of Greece in particular. That country's national mythology contains many interesting facts about the misadventures of its dynasties. For instance, we read that King Priam and Queen Hecuba, to whom the throne of Troy had been passed down though many generations, were warned in a prophetic dream that one of their 19 children, Paris,...

Published: Wednesday May 04 2016 Companies in the health sector have proved to be rewarding long-term investments, outperforming the market since 1995. Earnings per share on health stocks have grown between 10 and 14 per cent annually over the past five years, with an average total return of 19 per cent a year. They are very profitable, generate a lot of cash and pay high dividends – driven as they are by powerful megatrends. The first of these is demography, with the global population...

Published: Wednesday May 04 2016 Medical science made a wrong turn in the 1920s, according to Dr David Agus. An experiment took a dozen people with significant cuts on their legs, and treated half of them by wrapping bread dipped in water around the leg and half by leaving the leg open to the air. People with the bread on their legs healed twice as fast, and that spawned something called germ theory. ‘Germ theory says that as soon as you know what you’re up against, you know how to fix it....

Published: Wednesday April 06 2016 One of the biggest challenges facing medicine as populations age is the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s, the target of considerable investment in research which has yet to find a cure for patients with this distressing condition. But a pioneering Alzheimer’s prevention clinic at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center offers cutting-edge prevention strategies that can delay its onset. The clinic was founded in 2013 by neurologist...

Published: Wednesday January 27 2016 A Singapore group has become a leading supplier of comprehensive health services to businesses and health insurers in the Asia-Pacific region, helping keep patients out of hospital though preventative healthcare. Providing healthcare for all their citizens is a key issue for Asian governments. The populations of countries such as India, China and Indonesia are rapidly ageing, placing a growing burden on healthcare budgets which are already insufficient to...

Published: Tuesday January 12 2016 After a distinguished career conducting famous orchestras all over the world, the Japanese maestro has founded international academies that help young instrumentalists develop their potential by playing chamber music. From a young age, Seiji Ozawa was destined for a career as a classical musician. Born in 1935 to Japanese parents in China, he made a promising start studying piano when his family returned to Japan in 1944. His father had even bought a piano,...

Published: Tuesday December 29 2015 The Director of Geneva’s Campus Biotech is creating a new biotechnology and medical technology centre, bringing together different disciplines to find treatments that will save lives and improve the quality of life for patients. Since the beginning of modern pharmacology, the treatment of patients has relied on advances in medicine and biology to devise therapies that can cure or alleviate their conditions. Today, new approaches focus on specific biological...