FT2304 – The mystery of billionaires` improbably long marriages

Syndicated articles from
In partnership with
© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All Rights Reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Edition 2304 FT | 04 May 2015
BUSINESS LIFE
AP PHOTO
The mystery of billionaires’
improbably long marriages
Sir Richard Branson participates in an on court stunt during the second half of an NBA basketball game
between the Chicago Bulls and the Atlanta Hawks
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates
By Lucy Kellaway
To be a billionaire, the first
thing you need is a personality disorder. That is what I
had always assumed, based
on my own experience of
having interviewed a few of
them. Now I have corroboration from someone who
knows what she is talking
about. Justine Musk, who
spent eight years married
to the man behind PayPal,
SpaceX and now Tesla Motors, has taken it upon herself
to share with the world her
view that those who achieve
great things are mostly
“freaks and misfits”.
Her remarks were in response to an earnest question
recently posted on Quora:
How can I be as great as Bill
Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon
Musk or Sir Richard Branson? The short answer, she
wrote, is you can’t.
The longer answer amounts
to one of the best explanations of success I have ever
read. According to her it
comes in two types: normal
success - involving hard
work, talent etc - and extreme success - as enjoyed
by her ex. The normal variety she recommends; the extreme version is only available to those who are born
Bill Gates, who
married Melinda
21 years ago, appears
to have one of those
marriages so solid that
if I discovered the two
were splitting up, I would
feel let down
that way. “They are dyslexic,
they are autistic, they have
ADD, they are square pegs in
round holes, they piss people
off, get into arguments, rock
the boat.”
So they find something bigger than themselves to obsess
over and work insanely hard,
she explains. It is their way
of coping.
At a stroke Ms Musk has
destroyed the whole self
help industry. Seen like this,
there is absolutely no point
in studying extreme success.
If you aren’t born like that,
you will never achieve it.
And you would not want to
anyway.
However, these billionaires
remain of zoological interest,
particularly in terms of how
they manage their personal
lives. Ms Musk’s view on
this is pretty grim. Extreme
success, she reckons, comes
complete with “family drama, issues with the Significant Other you rarely see,
dark nights of the soul... little
sleep, less sleep than that”.
In other words, billionaires
are rotten people to marry.
Which is also precisely what
I had always thought.
Mr Musk himself sounds
like a particularly bad marital bet: shortly after divorcing Ms Musk he married an
actress, only to divorce and
remarry her in quick succession. Now he is in the process of divorcing her again.
Yet just as I was congratulating myself on not having married a billionaire, I
started thinking about the
other names in the Quora
question - Bill, Richard and
Steve. The remarkable thing
about them is not that they
have gone through wives as
quickly as the twinkling of a
bed post, but that they have
mostly found one and stuck
with her.
Bill Gates, who married
Melinda 21 years ago, appears to have one of those
marriages so solid that if
I discovered the two were
splitting up, I would feel let
down, as if the world had
become a less dependable
place. Sir Richard Branson,
after a starter marriage in
his early 20s, is still married
to his second wife after 25
years. And Steve Jobs remained married to the same
woman for 20 years, until he
died.
If you go down the
Forbes billionaires list
a weird pattern starts to
emerge. More than 40 per
cent of all marriages end in
divorce, but among the extremely successful, who one
might have expected to be
extremely unsuccessful in
wedlock, the reverse seems
to be the case.
Carlos Slim, number two
on the Forbes list after Mr
Gates, was married to the
same woman for 32 years,
until she died in 1999. Warren Buffett (#3) remained
married to his first wife
for 52 years (although for
much of that time he was
living with a cocktail waitress whom he married on his
wife’s death).
Further down the list there
are only a few who have exhibited certain traits of ADD
in their approach to matrimony: Larry Ellison has
while Phil Knight of Nike is
heading towards his golden
wedding.
How can such stability
happen? These billionaires
have all lived in the grip of
a rip-roaring obsession with
work that should have ruined
all relationships, and all have
enough money to attract gorgeous new wives - and to pay
off old ones.
I have no idea what the
Richard Branson, after
a starter marriage in his
early 20s, is still married
to his second wife after 25
years
had four wives and Ronald
Perelman five. They are the
exceptions - more of the
billionaires seem to be on
first wives than those who
are not. This is not much of
an achievement for Mark
Zuckerberg who only tied
the knot in 2012, but Jeff
Bezos and Michael Dell have
been married for more
than 20 years apiece, Eric
Schmidt for more than
30, Ray Dalio at Bridgewater has notched up about 40
reason is, but I wonder if it
might be that when the truly weird find someone who
suits them, they don’t give
them up in a hurry. Or perhaps it is that if you are transfixed by your work, an affair
offers insufficient thrill. Or it
could simply be that if you
hardly ever see your spouse,
he or she is significantly less
likely to get on your nerves.
Copyright The Financial
Times Limited 2015
04.05.2015
Syndicated articles from
F2
© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All Rights Reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
By Daniel Thomas
The gleaming metal and
glass 5G laboratory being
assembled on a campus at
the University of Surrey, a
few miles outside Guildford, speaks to British
ambitions when it comes
to building the next generation of mobile internet
technology.
While many mobile
phone users are only just
upgrading to faster 4G
networks, telecoms equipment providers are looking ahead to the next generation of mobile internet
technology.
Yet companies such as
Vodafone and BT have not
given the University of
Surrey funding to develop the technologies out of
scholarly love. They are
commercial partners that
have bought a stake in any
future profits generated by
the centre as well as the
chance to use the technology.
They are not the only
companies racing to develop 5G. Labs run by Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and
Samsung are working flat
out to produce the precious
global patents that will underpin the future of mobile
connectivity.
Most hope to have some
form of the technology in
testing by 2018.
But while previous generations of mobile have been
about making the internet
faster, 5G will go one step
further, according to Professor Rahim Tafazolli,
head of 5G research at the
University of Surrey.
He says that it is expected to make the internet fast
enough to make possible a
whole host of new applications, from connected
vehicles to the connective
devices that will enable the
internet of things.
“5G will be the start of
a new way to think about
communications,” says Prof
Tafazolli.
Ericsson believes there
will be up to 50bn connected devices globally by
2022, when the technology
is expected to start being
rolled out commercially.
The implications are profound. Imagine, for example, a self-driving car that
relied on a steady but constant stream of information
beamed via the internet
to operate. Unless the infrastructure that enabled
connectivity was robust
enough to allow information to be accessed all the
time, it would be impossible for the car to work.
BLOOMBERG
Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia race
to develop 5G mobile technology
An Ericsson AB employee works on data networking devices during production at the company’s factory in Tallinn, Estonia
Network
technology
tends to evolve every ten
years. The first generation cellular network was
launched in the 1980s and
supported voice services
only. It drove early mobile
phone adoption but was
problematic, with eaves-
breed of smartphone, capable of supporting video
and mobile television, was
born.
From 2010 4G allowed
operators to use spectrum
more efficiently, which
meant the speed of accessing mobile data was about
The next generation
will not be about more
than the mobile phone.
It will be about providing
connectivity over the
airwaves to billions of
devices
dropping and cloning common. Using a phone abroad
was impossible.
In the 1990s, 2G became
widespread and was able to
support far more users and
was more secure. This allowed the sending of “text
messages”, and consumers
were able to roam outside
of their home country.
The early 2000s saw the
emergence of 3G, which
supported high-speed data
services as consumers increasingly began using
broadband and the internet
on mobile devices. A new
10 times faster than 3G.
The next generation will
not be about more than the
mobile phone. It will be
about providing connectivity
over the airwaves to billions
of devices that in future will
require access to the internet,
ranging from driverless cars
to smart cities.
This latest shift partly explains the rationale behind
the €15.6bn acquisition of
Alcatel-Lucent by Nokia.
“The industry needs to
prepare for 5G,” says Rajeev Suri, chief executive
of Nokia. “It will come
sooner than people expect
and it will be bigger than
people expect.”
Regional authorities in
Europe and Asia have also
supported local efforts with
the aim of creating global standards based around
domestic technologies that
can be exported.
Among the projects
they have backed is the
5G Public and Private
Partnership
(5G-PPP),
a €1.4bn joint initiative
between the European
telecoms industry, the European Commission and
Huawei of China.
While any useful technology generally needs
to be lent to rival groups
under fair and reasonable
terms, there is big money
at stake in owning the patents for the next generation
of mobile services.
Networks will also need
to be improved and reconfigured, which will also
mean valuable sales for
the equipment vendors in
future.
But one problem is that
there is no standard definition for what 5G will be.
The risk is that companies
will end up using different
services.
At this year’s Mobile
World Congress in Barcelona, the annual telecoms
event, companies such as
Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson and Huawei, and even
the EU, set out in white
papers and demonstrations
their visions of how it
could work.
South Korea’s SK Telekom showed off a 5G robot. Ericsson had a remote
controlled earth mover.
But these seemed gimmicky - and hardly beyond
the capabilities of existing
4G connectivity.
Experts normally try to
describe 5G with reference to speed in terms of
gigabits per second. Scientists talk about “peak”
data rates of 10 Gbit/s - ten
times faster than 4G - although the University of
Surrey has trialled speeds
of 1 Tbit/s (terabit per second).
Capacity - the volume of
data flow - is estimated to
be anywhere between 100
and 1,000 times higher
than 4G, and the demand
for data is expected to rise
1000-fold over the next decade.
But Prof Tafazolli says
the key could be latency,
the amount of time it takes
for data to get through the
system and reach a device.
5G services will need to
respond in a single millisecond - about 50 times
5G
services
will need
to respond
in a single
millisecond
- about 50
times faster
than 4G to make
real-time
applications
such as
self-driving
cars
possible
faster than 4G - to make real-time applications such as
self-driving cars possible.
“There will be no delay an instant response from
the network, which will
be mission critical for the
connected digital society,”
he says.
Copyright The Financial
Times Limited 2015
mon 04.05.2015
特刊
D
AVID Beckham turned 40 on Saturday
and while memories
of his playing days
with England, Manchester United and Real Madrid fade, he
remains a captivating figure of
worldwide interest.
When he ended his playing
career on an unglamorous field
in northwestern France two
years ago, it brought the curtain
down on the career of one of the
world’s biggest sporting icons.
Since retiring, England’s former captain continues to prosper off the football field, where
his multi-faceted life centers
on celebrity and fashion, but
also ambassadorial roles and
an ambitious project to create
a Miami team in Major League
Soccer.
Here are five things to know
about Beckham:
Beckham plays soccer with young typhoon-survivors during his visit to typhoon-ravaged Tanauan township, Leyte province in
central Philippines
sell Scotch whisky and he promotes sportswear from Adidas.
Beckham’s Footwear Productions company turned over
15 million pounds (USD24
million) in 2013. The figures
did not include his shared company with wife Victoria Beckham, a former pop star with
the Spice Girls and now a world
famous fashion designer in her
own right.
A-LIST COMPANY If the
company you keep is anything
to judge by, Beckham is still a
high-roller in the fame stakes.
Guests at his 40th birthday
bash, to be held in the luxurious Amanjena resort just ou-
tside the ancient Moroccan city
of Marrakech on Saturday, are
reported to include Hollywood
actor Tom Cruise and director
Guy Ritchie, and star TV chef
Gordon Ramsay.
A few months back, Beckham
was at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris — where he finished his playing career with
PSG — sitting alongside music
celebs Jay Z and Beyonce and
former French president Nicolas Sarkozy as they watched
Beckham’s former teammates
take on Barcelona.
FALTERING FRANCHISE Not everything goes smoothly for Beckham, who drew
AP PHOTO
BRAND BECKHAM David Beckham’s earning potential remains potent, even away
from football. Beckham topped
the Sunday Times Sport Rich
List for Britain’s sportsmen
in 2013 and placed 11th in the
world list headed that year by
Tiger Woods. Beckham is now
affectionately viewed more as
a father and proud dad than a
swashbuckling footballer, giving him a more rounded, global appeal.
That appeal has been seized on
by Global Brands Group Holding Limited — one of the world’s leading branded apparel,
footwear, fashion and lifestyle
product companies. In December it announced the launch of
a joint venture with Beckham,
cashing in on the beaming smile and handsome looks.
Beckham’s appeal matured
when he played for Manchester
United, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain. He remains
sought-after, having signed
agreements to promote casinos
in Macau and Singapore. Diageo Plc also hired him to help
F3
Beckham’s influence grows as
former soccer star turns 40
AP PHOTO
By Jerome Pugmire, Paris
FEATURE
Beckham sits with his daughter, Harper, as Los Angeles Kings mascot Bailey visits while they watch the Kings play the Anaheim
Ducks during the first period of an NHL hockey game
Beckham
remains
sought-after,
having signed
agreements
to promote
casinos in
Macau and
Singapore
England’s wrath when he was
red-­carded playing for England
against Argentina at the 1998
World Cup.
His venture into Major League
Soccer, with plans for a Miami
team under the south Florida
sun, is proving problematic.
While MLS announced a deal
with Beckham for a Miami team
in January 2014, no timetable
has been set because of the lack
of a stadium. There has been
stiff opposition to the move. A
coalition of politicians and businesses led by Royal Caribbean
Cruises opposes building a stadium at Port Miami.
Two months ago, the Miami-Dade County Commission
agreed to offer Beckham a county-owned parcel site near Marlins Park. But Beckham’s group
— called Beckham Miami United
— has expressed strong preference for a downtown location.
BECKS THE AMBASSADOR While playing for Paris Saint-Germain in the final
months of his professional career during the 2012-13 season,
Beckham was already locking
down future roles working as
an ambassador.
The biggest of those is with
British broadcaster Sky, reportedly worth 20 million
pounds ($31 million) over five
years. The former England
captain’s work involves encouraging the growth of grassroots sport across the United
Kingdom and Ireland. He has
also been appointed to the Sky
Academy, launched to create
opportunities for young people in sport, arts and television.
He has also been working as
global ambassador for Chinese
football, helping the image of
the country’s game by promoting it domestically and internationally.
Beckham in formal mode is
not such a rare sight. He was
previously an ambassador for
the 2012 London Olympics
and worked with England on
its flawed bid to host the 2018
World Cup, which Russia won.
THE
FAMILY
MAN
London-­born Beckham’s career
took him from Manchester, to
Madrid, Milan, Los Angeles
and — briefly — to a luxurious
Parisian hotel.
After playing his last game for
Paris Saint-Germain two years
ago, Beckham relocated to England. It was here that David
and Victoria Beckham — who
is 41 — first bought a mansion,
dubbed Beckingham Palace
by British tabloids that have
followed his every move for
years, soon after they married
in 1999.
The first three of their four
children — Brooklyn, Romeo,
Cruz and Harper — grew up
there before the family moved
to Spain in 2003 when Beckham joined Real Madrid.
After four years in Madrid, the
Beckhams moved to Los Angeles, where Beckham played
for LA Galaxy until 2012, interspersed with loan moves to
Italian giant AC Milan in 2009
and 2010.
Early last year, they sold the
Hertfordshire mansion — which included seven bedrooms, a
football pitch and even a maze
— for 11 million pounds ($17
million) and relocated to London, where they live in the posh
neighborhood of Kensington in
a house costing more than 30
million pounds ($46 million).
That proved a convenient location for 16-year-old Brooklyn,
their eldest child, when he trained with English Premier League side Arsenal’s academy
team earlier this year. AP
NATURE
F4
04.05.2015 mon
自然
AP PHOTO
Hong Kong’s historic trams are
choking from roadside pollution
polluted sections of the route
exceeded World Health Organization guidelines for roadside
air quality on at least 80 days.
In Central and Causeway Bay:
More than 280 days.
“That means that more than
half the year, the air is not safe
to breathe,” said Jimmy Fung, a
HKUST professor who participated in the study.
Air quality
often exceeded
safe levels
along the entire
length of the
tram line
A tram stops as pedestrians cross the main street in Central, Hong Kong
Frederik Balfour
H
ONG Kong’s historic double-decker trams are not
just one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions, they are
also one of its most hazardous.
Air quality often exceeded safe
levels along the entire length of
the tram line, and not just in
Central and Causeway Bay districts as previously believed, according to research by the Hong
Kong University of Science and
Technology.
“Clearly from this study it’s
not limited to those areas,” Alexis Lau, a professor from the
university who specializes in air
quality research, said at a press
conference Thursday. “This
helps us map the distribution of
pollution much better.”
The data, gathered by mobile monitoring devices placed
inside the trams between March 2014 and February 2015,
showed that even the least
While the trams are considered
the least polluting mode of transport, they put riders most at risk
because their open windows and
doors leave people completely
exposed to roadside pollution.
“Who is the culprit? Tramways
are the victim, they are run on
electricity and very clean,” said
Simon Ng, chief research officer
of think tank Civic Exchange,
which collaborated on the study with the assistance of Hong
Kong Tramways Ltd.
Ng urged policy makers to consider ways to reduce emissions
by reducing or removing road
traffic and creating pedestrianonly areas as well as explore ways
to improve wind ventilation and
air dispersion. Bloomberg
ASK THE VET
by Dr Ruan Du Toit Bester
Cat Neutering Side Effects
C
AT neutering is the sterilization of the
pet and is a method to control the feline overpopulation. In males the procedure
can also be called castration, while the removal of the ovaries in females may also be
called spaying or ovariohysterectomy. The
neutering procedure may have short and
long term side effects.
SHORT TERM SIDE EFFECTS
The neutering procedure in felines is
simple and will have minimal side effects.
The cat may experience pain post surgery,
but the vet will prescribe suitable pain medications.
During the surgery, the pet may lose
blood, but this may not happen if the procedure is performed with lasers.
Other post operation side effects of the
neutering surgery include redness and
swelling of the surgery wound, infections
(that may be treated with antibiotics) and
scarring.
In rare cases, the surgery may not be successful and the vet will need to perform a
second neutering procedure. Opt for a reputable surgeon to ensure that your pet is
in safe hands.
WEIGHT GAIN Weight gain may be a long term side ef-
fect of cat neutering. After the surgery, the
cat will no longer spend time searching for
a partner to mate, so the cat will be more
sedentary. If the cat eats the same amount
of food, it will gain weight.
You should discuss with your vet and
make some changes in your cat’s diet; you
should reduce its calorie intake, without
affecting the amounts of essential nutrients that your pet needs.
LACK OF ACTIVITY As the cat will no longer be interested in
mating, it will spend more time indoors.
Male cats tend to become aggressive when
they fight for a female or a territory. After
being castrated, the cat will be less aggressive and will sleep more.
The lack of activity may lead to obesity.
You should get your pet used to new indoors activities to help him be active. Initiate different games; get some toys and
encourage your pet to be active.
STUNTED GROWTH The stunted growth may be a side effect
of the neutering process, but it is rare. This
may happen only if the neutering is performed too early. Consult your vet to determine the optimal time to perform the neutering of your pet. The best time to neuter
cats is just before they reach sexual maturity (before the first heat cycle in females).
CYSTITIS Cystitis or urinary infections are more
common in neutered cats. In rare cases,
male cats may experience urinary blockages. To prevent these, the vet may recommend a wet diet and you should also increase the cat’s water intake.
These side effects are minimal when
compared to the many benefits of the neutering surgery. In addition to preventing
unwanted pregnancies, the cat’s behavior
will be calmer, it will fight less, roam less,
be less vocal and the spraying behavior
may also stop. The neutering surgery will
also reduce the chances of reproductive
system cancers.
Hope this helps Till next week
Dr Ruan
Ask the Vet:
Royal Veterinary Centre
Tel: +853 28501099, +853 28523678
Emergency: +853 62662268
Email: [email protected]