Longreads Pick
The luxury brand remains under tight control by the Hermès heirs, who have scattered across three continents to pursue careers as varied as deejaying, motorcycle sales, and investment banking. And they want nothing to do with their new minority shareholder. Bernard Arnault is the head of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the fourth-richest man in the world. He has met, and overcome, resistance to his maneuvers before. He built LVMH into the No. 1 luxury group in the world by taking control—sometimes brutally—of more than 50 brands, including storied names such as Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Guerlain. Just this month he reeled in Bulgari, a 127-year-old Italian jewelry and watch company, once its family owners agreed to sell after a years-long courtship.
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Published: Mar 25, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,316 words)
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What We Can Learn from a Nuclear Reactor
The connection between banks and nuclear reactors is not obvious to most bankers, nor banking regulators. But to the men and women who study industrial accidents such as Three Mile Island, Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal or the Challenger shuttle—engineers, psychologists and even sociologists—the connection is obvious. James Reason, a psychologist who studies human error in aviation, medicine, shipping and industry, uses the downfall of Barings Bank as a favourite case study. “I used to speak to bankers about risk and accidents and they thought I was talking about people banging their shins,” he told me. “Then they discovered what a risk is. It came with the name of Nick Leeson.”
By Tim Harford, Financial Times
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Longreads Pick
The connection between banks and nuclear reactors is not obvious to most bankers, nor banking regulators. But to the men and women who study industrial accidents such as Three Mile Island, Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal or the Challenger shuttle—engineers, psychologists and even sociologists—the connection is obvious. James Reason, a psychologist who studies human error in aviation, medicine, shipping and industry, uses the downfall of Barings Bank as a favourite case study. “I used to speak to bankers about risk and accidents and they thought I was talking about people banging their shins,” he told me. “Then they discovered what a risk is. It came with the name of Nick Leeson.”
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Published: Jan 14, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,095 words)
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