PC-Brand Journalist

PCPAUL COMRIE

CONTENT SAMPLES

Luxembourg Nation Branding - EU Presidency 2015Digital Luxembourg Campaign

History + Storytelling + Content samples

On track to deliver 1.36 trillion in growth by 2020 alone for the world’s top ten economies, the ICT enabled single digital market is making the world a better place. But to succeed within it, positioning has never been more important.

Digital Lëtzebuerg is an official briefing interface combining reports, interviews and commentary about the ICT phenomenon and Luxembourg’s relevance as a tech hub in a market of 500 million+ consumers. Be it for HQ, distribution, shared service, data collation or as a concerned citizen, this site will help you understand the production and framework factors that make Luxembourg strategic.

Ranked number five and rising by the World Economic Forum, the trusted host to the EU parliamentary servers and a recipient of a Google grant for its breakthrough 2015 security bill are only a few of the more than 50 reasons why Luxembourg is a rising figure in this industry. Here are several others:

• With two thirds of the world’s Tier IV storage capacity and an historical respect for privacy laws, Luxembourg is at the forefront of the debate between data protection and data mining

• With 1.3 trillion euros under management, Luxembourg’s FinTech and Scale-up Finance options are keeping entrepreneurs in Europe

• Low latency, performance infrastructure to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and London provides real-time transaction analysis

A final would be its ranking in a recent BBC poll as one of the top two destinations worldwide to live as an expatriate.

The country’s research clusters, creativity hubs and ‘coding as the new literacy’ education policies are at the forefront of the debate about what makes for both happy people and a prosperous 21st century economy.

With the lowest projected ICT vacancies in the EU by 2020, Luxembourg is an important place to analyze this changing landscape.

BUILD

PERFEC

TA promised future age of cooperation between those who build the world and those who perfect it is finally here.

Ten years ago Luxembourg officially pivoted towards ICT as its second economic pillar after finance. The country’s reputation for agility and forward thinking however meant it was already the first EU member to implement eCommerce directives in 2001 and 2003. But it was bold action starting in 2005 that has laid the groundwork for a new ecosystem. With HQ services for the likes of Amazon, eBay, gaming giants Kabam and Big Fish, and an enabled focus on startups like DigiCash and NAME just to name a few, the country has doubled the sector’s GDP representation to 7% in less than ten years and created 20 thousand jobs, outpacing even tech titans Sweden and Finland as the most competitive OECD member in this category. With the launch of official branding interface Digital Lëtzebuerg in 2014, the assembly of a unified metafederation ICT Luxembourg for facilitated networking, and the social ecosystem overhaul Digital (4) Education, not only will the country be able to speak in a unified voice going forward, it also means they have addressed the most pressing social issue of our times: developing new skills to meet the demands of a new labour market. Born of a quiet, skilful strategy formed on exchanges in Silicon Valley and Singapore’s Smart City has enabled Luxembourg to position itself as the high- tech intermediary between traditional American outside the box thinking and Asia’s talent for structured reform. With a focus on attracting foreign talent by virtue of an increased minimum salary and nation branding successes (Voted by Expat Insider this year as one of the top 5 countries to live and work in worldwide) the country is attracting foreign talent and building a digital native culture that is committed to inclusivity, excellence and the single digital market. It is the hope of this collaboration known as Digital Lëtzebuerg that all professional and personal stakeholders from a local perspective will help curate the interface from their own individual perspective. The dialogue belongs to us all and we are enriched by the common framework. We can as a second step then take the shared resource documenting Luxembourg’s remarkable story of digital transformation to a global audience – because as the Android says, we can work together and not be the same.

DOMINANT CHANGE

The government’s sweeping reform bill Digital Education cites the country – in its entirety – as majority stakeholders in the collaborative challenge to prepare Luxembourg’s social ecosystem for the single digital market.

A blistering pace of change intended to make Luxembourg a ‘first mover’ in overcoming the ‘digital divide’ between this generation’s ‘digital natives’ (born in the 80s and 90s) and the workplace of the future, the bill has centred on a cloud-based pedagogy known as Digital Classroom Let-zebuerg set to go live in October. Permitting 65 thousand students and educators to interact with key applications Bee Secure, MathemaTIC and Bee Creative, the traditional curriculum has been enhanced to favour jobs dominated by the cloud, data and apps.

A tuition-free education for motivated local talent has also been generously provided with the coding Lycée in Clervaux and between 70-100 especially promising youth will find cutting-edge incubation at Ecole 3.14, which val-ues innovation and disruption. High-tech infrastructure for workshops (e.g. MakerSpace), cybercafés and sporting facilities will be meeting ground for a close mentorship between private sector talent scouts, university clusters and institutions invested in prepping local talent for local jobs.

Centred on the first generation to come of age with the internet, the reform is however skilfully inclusive, built on a ripple-effect strategy that is hoped will go from child, to parent to grandparent. This broad intersection of stakeholders will create lasting emotional stability during a time of exciting change from traditional citizenry to digital peers.

CODING ACADEMY.

In July Luxembourg became the first EU country to favour electronically archived documents over their paper originals in courts of law, provided the storage is regulated by ILNAS, the country’s auditory power guaranteeing the terms, conditions and standards of storage.

Known as “burden of proof” status, the change is a win in the short and long term. Not only providing a certification status for individuals planning to work in this field and thus creating local jobs, the bill also makes Luxembourg the preferred entrepôt for business and institutions looking to secure all of their data in one place.

Other legal systems have not kept pace with the real-time needs of the electronic age. Not only freeing bodies from cumbersome paper original records, Luxemboug’s cutting-edge storage facilities provide the ideal place to mine the data’s valuable content.

Using algorithms such as GuideSpark, which mines stored consumer behaviour and has been proven to increase sales by as much as three-fold, a recent Wall Street Journal finding cites data mining as a business with an annual growth rate of 50%. What’s more, as a sector it attracted $400 million in VC funding in Silicon Valley in 2014 alone.

With FinTech’s plans to enable similar startups at home, the longer term strategic value to Luxembourg is indisputable.

Electronic Archiving.

BURDEN OF PROOF

Helen Patton is the granddaughter of General George S. Patton Jr. and the founder and CEO of the Patton Foundation. Responsible for the sustainable development of the Patton legacy through the development and launch of good works and products which will sustain veteran support charities, the Patton Foundation is the steward of Patton Products, Patton Publishing, Patton Films and Patton Houses. Headquartered in Luxembourg where her grandfather is buried with the men who fell at the Battle of the Bulge, the foundation works extensively at reconciliation and healing initiatives throughout conflict zones.

• Patton Foundation

• Patton Watches

• Patton Products

• Patton Publishing

• Patton Films

• Patton Houses

For every destiny there is a time of struggle.

Time ticks away, always ticking. Right there with you: in darkness, at first light, the eve of battle or the surge of victory. It is the great eternal.

But time is not timing.

Great men have always understood this principle, no more so than General George S. Patton Jr., who did not simply arrive at his destiny – but prepared for it, struggled, yearned and fought for it throughout all the times of his life:

A shootout with Pancho Villa in 1916 that marked the end of the Old West.

Wounded for a false peace in 1918, only to return two decades later as the ‘Lion of Algiers’ to form a lasting one.

Challenging God’s weather at the Battle of the Bulge, where he found both victory and shortly after, an iconic death, forever at rest with his men on the fields of freedom.

George S. Patton Jr. wasn’t merely at the right place, at the right time. When it came to destiny, he was on time.

Patton Watch. Redeem the time.

Bastogne, 70th Battle Of The Bulge Memorial 2014

The winter of 1949 would not end. L.A. recorded its first snowfall and snowdrifts fifteen feet high covered the Midwest. Across the northern hemisphere econo-mies briefly stalled in a post-war recovery that was otherwise set to boom. An American golden age of consumption and rising living standards would eventu-ally follow. But the New Year’s icy conditions were an appropriate symbol of that dawning age.

It was a strange, pivotal year. Everywhere jockeying forces achieved spectacular change: American-controlled Japan opened a stock exchange, entering a mod-ern economy; Israel held its first election, making David Ben-Gurion its first Prime Minister; Mao made China communist; and Germany became a Federal Repub-lic, financed by the US and backed by a brand new alliance called NATO. Pres-ident Truman invented the DOD, professionalising the military industrial complex to meet rising challenges.

It was a time of extraordinary complexity and shabby entanglement, and very few individuals caught up in it survived. In a soup of spies and double dealing middlemen, former enemies were now partners, fighting former allies, in a war no one admitted they were preparing for.

Just as winter abated, the real cold came in with the fall. Soviet scientists tested their first atomic bomb in August 1949, ushering in the Cold War.

In that late winter of 1949, Rudolf Strassner came back from the dead. A veteran of Hitler’s Eastern Front and a POW in Stalin’s camps, by the time he came home he had somehow escaped two of the bloodiest chapters in history. Late last month, the piano which bought him his freedom sixty-seven years ago made that same 2000 kilometre journey, albeit under different circumstances.

Travelling all the way from Brjansk-Beshiza, a glum industrial town south of Moscow, the piano was unloaded from a plain white van onto a sidewalk in Saarbrücken, amid camera crew and hushed onlookers after a difficult ten-day run. Months of complex negotiations with Russian officials preceded the piano’s journey across the borders of the Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic be-fore it finally arrived in Germany.

But at the time of Strassner’s capture at the hands of Soviet forces in 1945, you could not make that journey without an army behind you. Upon his release four years later, you couldn’t make it at all. The partitioning of Germany made sure of that.

His life was not bought in some spy-thriller exchange, nor prolonged by some inhu-man act of cannibalism, as depicted in James Meeks’s 2005 novel, The People’s Act of Love. The price for Rudolf Strassner’s head was a song. And the American wom-an who delivered the piano that saved his life so long ago in a Russian camp is the granddaughter of Hitler’s most celebrated enemy. Peace is stranger than fiction.

Captured in Czechoslovakia in 1945, the 16-year-old Strassner was part of Hitler’s attempt to stem the haemorrhage that was his Eastern Front and from which the Nazis never recovered. This was a theatre which saw over thirty million deaths in four years and is considered the low point in human barbarism. Boys and old men were sent to the front without training and made to fight in anti-aircraft units.

“We were preparing for exams. They took us straight to the Volkssturm,” says Strassner, who is matter of fact. “We had no idea how to fight.”

This ragtag ‘People’s Army’ came to symbolise the bankruptcy of Hitler’s reign. It was all a far cry from the flower of German youth that had been Hitler’s Sixth Army, who had invaded their Soviet allies only three years earlier in 1942.

In the heady days of those early triumphs, it was easy to believe in the genetic supremacy of Hitler’s boast. He could storm the very heavens. He might just as well have stormed hell. Statistics tell a conflicting but terrible story: of the roughly 5 million men who mounted an offensive, 3.5 million were wounded, 1.1 million were killed in action and 1.1 million went missing or became POWs. The handful that sur-vived the fighting were soon deserted by an occupied fatherland now shamed and desperate to forget the soldiers abandoned in Russia’s frozen wastes.

A vengeful Russia exacted retribution. Soviet industrial policy and Stalin’s blood-lust combined with this body of Wehrmacht POWs to create a system of crushing work camps spanning East Europe and Siberia, made famous in The Gulag Ar-chipelago. This repository for criminals and political dissidents (real and imagined) is how Russia leapt from Tsarist feudalism to an industrialised superpower in one generation, putting men into orbit and bankrolling Communism.

Patton Foundation Commemorative Feature

Patton Publishing

In the chaotic close to Hitler’s Eastern theatre, soldiers were “mopped up” by Russian authorities establishing territorial dominance in the Red Army’s push for Berlin. The first order was to have these German POWs processed in Russia. For Strassner, that meant a routing camp in Brjansk-Beshiza. Surviving German teenagers would then be cate-gorised and sent to Siberia. Those boys who survived Siberia would return to their homelands many years later as broken men, altered by exile.

“I was one of eleven thousand in that camp,” says Strassner, softly. “There were many, many other camps.”

Of the 1.1 million German men who endured captivity under Stalin, fewer than ten thousand returned alive.

The miraculous fate that befell him in this first camp is the reason why his survival is being celebrated around the world today. The story of this piano, which saved his life, is part of a larger book that commem-orates the lives of veterans from numerous conflicts and often from opposing sides. Entitled Portraits of Service, it won the Gold Medal for Independent Publishing in New York on May 9 and will receive the award on June 4. The book will soon be released to public audiences. Strassner’s haunting story is one of the rarest in that collection of poi-gnant memoirs and the piano which was recently delivered to him in his hometown in Germany is perhaps the best symbol of international reconciliation that this book embodies.

During this first placement in Brjansk-Beshiza, Strassner worked to clear the Desna River of trees. Soviet camps were known to be rife with dysentery. Prisoners were fed once daily, a ration of Russian black bread and thin soup, upon which they had to survive an eighteen-hour shift.

“I would sing to myself in the cold,” recalls Strassner. “It helped me through the work.”

Now, at 84 years of age, the trim German composer radiates an inten-sity of purpose through his eyes, which are unforgettable. He carries a cane and an old man’s cap, though he doesn’t seem to have much use for either, leaving them as he does on window sills, walking freely and briskly, unaided. One has to guess at the fierce intelligence con-cealed by his quiet demeanour. In some part, it must be a hangover of a life lived largely in silences, without the hero’s well-met welcome. Here is a man whose army has been rightly vilified in defeat. So to be celebrated like this so late in his life, by his former enemies, must be quite an adjustment.

There is something universal about this survivor’s discomfort with his own luck: it is more realistic to us this way. The unease highlights the

kind of man Strassner is – an artist, someone of a particular sensitivity to the larger picture. Here is a thinking man who survived a field man’s horror. And this is why the story is so moving.

One day, entering the mess hall from his hopeless labours, the sixteen-year-old found a grand piano. When Hitler had come for him he had been just weeks away from beginning the exams for his Arbitur, a music-academy diploma.

The camp commandant overheard Rudolf play, and summoned him immediately. The Soviet Union needed to bolster Party sentiment amongst workers. He played Bach, impressed her with his knowledge of Russian classical achievements, and even played some of his own, boyish compositions. He was pulled indefinitely from brute labour, sent to acquire instruments outside the camp, compose scores, and form an orchestra. Love of music knows no bounds, particularly in Russia.

While Strassner allocated resources for his orchestra and was im-mersed into local life beyond the camp’s razor wire perimeter, thou-sands of boys just like him slipped unheard into Stalin’s Siberia, never to return. All he had ever believed in had been proved false: those he was taught were subhuman had taken him in and spared his life be-cause of that which was most civilised in himself.

Along with all the other things a boy must learn when making his way in the world, the young Rudi had to contend with the collapse of one set of absolutes (Nazism) only to be replaced by another (Stalinism). In between were the men and women who negotiated the grey zone of daily life.

That learning curve must have been a ninety degree angle.

In 2010, Strassner returned to Russia for the first time since his release sixty-one years earlier. He toured the remaining facilities of his old camp at Brjansk-Beshiza. In the camp commandant’s quarters he found his old piano still housed against the wall. Filmmakers cap-tured the incredible emotion live, as Strassner reached out and lightly touched the piano, tears lining his face. At that time the story was only that Rudolf Strassner had been to Russia as a POW and returned alive. The filmmakers themselves knew nothing of his history with the piano.

But there was another element, one which gives the story its final gravitas.

His inclusion into Soviet society was perhaps deeper than one might have thought. Not only was his life spared the grind of penal labour, but he was allowed to socialise, give piano lessons, and tune instru-ments even, all which would imply spending time in Russian homes.

“I made many friends,” says Strassner, looking out the window.

During this period he met a local girl, one of his apparatchik pupils. Her name was Anoushka. She was also that camp commandant’s beauti-ful fifteen-year-old daughter.

“She was my student though we were both so young. I spent a lot of time just holding her hand.”

Many films have charted this territory, blockbusters such as Dances With Wolves or, more recently, Avatar. Strassner’s reticence is all the more elegiac then for his mysterious reserve. There must be quite a story to tell. But in an age of celebrity confessionals, there is some-thing refreshingly chivalric about this type of understatement. She was his sweetheart, the rest is left unsaid.

Sitting at home in Germany watching local TV, an American wom-an with a very famous last name saw the footage of Strassner crying at the sight of the piano in his former camp.

“I knew I had to get that piano,” she says. “It was the peace symbol I was looking for all this time.”

The fact that her last name is also famous for American military su-premacy – famous as an enemy of both Germany and Russia – made her involvement in this rare story all the more astonishing.

Helen Patton bears a striking resemblance to General George Patton, winner of the Battle of the Bulge and the greatest field commander of World War II. Patton was a singular iconoclast of the American forces, as savaged for his vanities as he was respected for his prowess and bravery in the field. He was a complex man of genius and someone whose own fate affected millions. He was also the only Allied com-mander whom Adolf Hitler feared. The fact then, that this piano was brought out of Russia by Patton’s granddaughter for her grandfather’s enemy, is symbolic of the peace Patton won.

But Helen Patton shares more than the general’s physical traits. She has her grandfather’s commanding presence and skilful administration of ceremony.

(Full length 5,000 word feature)

Patton Publishing

• Bank of China

• ChinaLux Chamber

• Post & Telecommunications

• Delano Magazine

• Embassy of China

• Goverment of Luxembourg

Ghostwriter

Client Constellation Interface

List of stakeholders directly represented by my blog writing services. Focus on bilateral EU-China investments.

In July 2009 The People’s Republic of China used its own currency in a cross-border investment for the first time. This is significant for many reasons. For one, it wasn’t traditional Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Not exactly.

It is what Mr. Jian Xue, Corporate Manager for Bank of China in Luxembourg - which has been in operation since 1979 - calls “China’s first act of Overseas Direct Investment (ODI)”.

“What this means,” Mr. Xue told me recently, “is that China is opening up its capital, in its own currency mind you, to overseas markets for the first time.”

As of late, not just a select group of approved, largely government-owned Chinese companies can send money abroad. All Chinese companies can.

Why is that significant for everyone else?

“It means we are not using the dollar or the euro as our sole currency for global trade. We’re making our capital available to world markets,” Mr. Xue explained.

To give you an idea of what’s at stake, think of it like this: China’s investments in European companies grew five times since 2009, totalling 6.7 Billion USD by the close of 2011. That figure is set to triple by 2015.

It also means that countries other than China will be using Chinese currency - called the Renmimbi (RMB) - in their financial centres. Chief among them is Luxembourg, which received 48% of Chinese capital earmarked for European investment in 2011 due to its structural advantages.

“This is something we call the Dim Sum Effect,” Mr. Xue said at the most recent event organised by ChinaLux, the non-profit chamber that promotes positive business relationships between China and Luxembourg.

“This is a financial instrument from Hong Kong that is part of a steady flow of smaller investments eventually adding up to quite a feast,” he continued.

Entitled, The Renmimbi: New Opportunity for Luxembourg, the event was hosted at Banque International à Luxembourg’s (BIL) headquarters last week. The speakers were introduced by Mr. Michel Maricau, Vice-Chairman of ChinaLux, and the Chinese Ambassador to Luxembourg, His Excellency Xianqi Zeng, who reminded us to “pay attention”.

So we should: China’s economy is now the second largest globally and is everyone’s “locomotive” for economic growth.

Although finance industry related, I thought the night would have major ramifications for Luxembourg business overall. As I hope you will see, it does. Accompanying Mr. Xue from the Bank of China, local experts Mr. Fernand Grulms, CEO of Luxembourg for Finance, and Mr. Patrick Casters, Head of Private Banking International for BIL, also spoke and sat through a rigorous Q&A about the significance of the RMB as an international trade currency.

DIM

SUM

BON

DS

RMB Currency FeatureMulti Stakeholder Feature

“It means we are not using the

dollar or the euro as our sole currency

for global trade. We’re making our

capital available to world markets.

- Mr. Xue

“

MEN on motorcycles, slipping in and out of traffic. It is nearing 2 a.m. on a weeknight and the freeway from the airport to the suburbs of Mumbai is, for all practical purposes, in rush hour still. The wind carries the smell of burning wood; in the haze of tropical steam hangs the reeking compost of an over-populated metropolis. The night air is spiced and wet. Breathing is difficult. Great clouds of silt sift through the air and fall slowly down. The lanes are jammed with cars, yet there are no pile-ups. The bikes are moving at over 70 km an hour and some riders are wearing sandals, shorts even. Most don't wear hel-mets. Some cover their mouths with black kerchiefs tied at the back of their necks, makeshift filters for the leaden air. They have the look of highwaymen. Some women sit behind, side saddle, legs pressed firmly together, holding loosely onto their husbands with alarming de-tachment, or not at all if they are clutching a baby to their chest. Their saris slip behind them on the night wind.

The not-so-fast lane

Shanties line the road, like chaos contained. There are Tata steel pipes chained to flatbeds the circumference is such that a grown man could walk through. Behind, shacks spread for miles. A tarpau-lin overhang covers part of the sidewalk. I see maybe seven pairs of bony feet, and the bodies are touching, covered by what seems an old sheet. They are sleeping and I cannot see their faces. We are on our way to New Bombay, my classmate's parents and I; they invited me to stay for the weekend when they heard I was travelling in India. My friend and I hung out in England for a year, and I wanted to see the East. My friend's father, a scientist, is in the front passenger seat of the hired SUV, explaining things to me. I glimpse a dead-looking ox

This Side Of Paradise

pulling a family down a side street on a flatbed cart. The animal's skin is grey and loose and its eyes are yellowed. "But in 10 years things will be different," my classmate's mother says, seeing me stare. I sense the father does not agree.

The father takes me to a lake every morning. We try to make it there by 7 a.m. or earlier, but sometimes I sleep too late. If we are there on time, the path that runs along the lake's circumference is filled with people getting their early morning exercise. The sun is strangely exotic to me in this climate, lifting just off the trees in the park and the apartment buildings in the distance. I think I can see a mountain range to the north.

I can't see him, but it is a plaintive sad echo. I assume the man is religious, and this is ceremonious."He's selling vegetables," the mother tells me, smiling.

My friend's parents take me to a museum in south Mumbai. I am fas-cinated by the use of colour in Indian traditional painting. My compan-ions' approach to art is logical, precise; they appear to derive more pleasure from microscopic details, the intricate weaving and brilliant designs. Mine is visceral.

The armoury section is imperious: any nation capable of forging such fine weaponry can certainly conduct business on a world scale. Noth-ing I've seen so far has matched this display of Indian manufacturing prowess.

We are on Marine Drive, the place they call the Queen's Necklace. High-rise properties line the shore. The sun is retreating in a ball of perfect orange. The sweetness of spring is fleeting; pollution has in-flamed the chemical hypersensitivity of the atmosphere.

There are the haunted night sounds of a circus carousel and children screaming in glee as the wheel turns. Luminous food stalls are abuzz in a rush of activity: bubbling oil, the thwack of a blunt knife cutting vegetables. Families linger in hungry anticipation. Behind us, over the dark cityscape, neon lights flash for arranged online marriages and German engine parts.Young lovers have discovered privacy in the anonymity of public plac-es; they are embracing cheek-to-cheek, but not kissing. "Here, they can have a good time," the mother tells me. The sand is widely lit-tered with the husks from roasted corncobs and the smell of burning charcoal is delicious and familiar. The sun is gone but for a mercurial streak on the trade winds off the Arabian Sea.I am in an air-conditioned sedan and we are driving to the domestic airport in Santa Cruz. The freeway is relentlessly new and lined by skyscrapers. The asphalt is new and demarcations are painted in bright-perforated lines. There are billboards with beauties and midriffs on show. Everyone is driving an SUV. My friend's parents stay to en-sure that I check in safely, but not getting through safely in an airport like this would take considerable effort. We say goodbye; my friend has arranged to pick me up at Chennai airport.

In a hurryIn the Departures lounge I approach a counter selling sandwiches and colas. It is the airport equivalent of a street shop. Men are waiting, hustling the vendor. Thinking it my turn, I step up to place my order. A young professional slips in front of me. He buys a soft drink and exchanges money. "There's a line," I say."What," he says, looking back. He mutters something in Hindi to the vendor and they both laugh. When in Rome, I think. The young man stands aside, browsing through a magazine. As I am about to pay for my coffee, he slinks back in front and buys the magazine also.Walls of glass and stainless steel surround me; the air is cool and fresh. Everywhere wealth is evidenced."There's something about Eastern poverty," I remember my friend's father saying one night over a drink. "People here can be resigned to it. In the West, they are not. You have no choice but to be well off. The shame is too great, being impoverished. But that isn't the case here." But I can't agree with him, not entirely, not with the legacy I see about me. People aren't resigned here; they are moving out.The new and the oldBeyond the slums that border the runway wall, I see high-rise com-plexes under construction. I know the buildings will be faultlessly modern some out-Americanising the Americans. But the men clinging with bare hands to the outside of those buildings must be sick in this heat. They are laying the bricks, and they are hanging on to the walls some fifteen storeys up, perched on bamboo pole scaffolding. There are no security harnesses or fall ropes. I can see the poles bend under their weight, made heavier by the bricks and mortar on their shoulders. The system is ingenious, lightweight and a fast set-up.“Two men died last week,” the father told me. “The poles broke.”Current Western hype about India isn’t wrong; but it is inaccurate, vulgar even. Opportunities must be created and wealth made. A huge new middleclass has risen from the hell of cinderblocks and factories, backend operations and rural-urban migration. But for most of India’s unfortunate, the old rules still apply: toil, hope and bamboo poles lashed to modern engineering.Beyond the slums that border the runway wall, I see high-rise com-plexes under construction. I know the buildings will be faultlessly modern some out-Americanising the Americans. But the men clinging with bare hands to the outside of those buildings must be sick in this heat. They are laying the bricks, and they are hanging on to the walls some fifteen storeys up, perched on bamboo pole scaffolding. There are no security harnesses or fall ropes. I can see the poles bend under their weight, made heavier by the bricks and mortar on their shoulders. The system is ingenious, lightweight and a fast set-up."Two men died last week," the father told me. "The poles broke."Current Western hype about India isn't wrong; but it is inaccurate, vulgar even. Opportunities must be created and wealth made. A huge new middleclass has risen from the hell of cinderblocks and factories, backend operations and rural-urban migration. But for most of India's unfortunate, the old rules still apply: toil, hope and bamboo poles lashed to modern engineering.

According to Rupert Hoogewerf of The Hurun Report, who spoke to a record turnout of over 86 private guests Monday night at JS restaurant on the subject of “Capitalism in Communist China”, that idealistic price tag comes in at a cool US$10 million.

$17 million buys you economic freedom and a billion buys you unhappiness.

Under the guise of the “China Chopsticks Dinner Group” and hosted by Marine Tse and Mikkel Stroerup, the networking gala of executives and entrepreneurs gathered to be both entertained and informed on the most important subject of our time: are Chinese Communists all that different from us?

Here’s a hint (backed up by Evan Osnos’ excellent New York-er “Dispatches from China”): not much.

They love French holidays and wine, Swiss time pieces, American, British and Canadian universities, glamorous status-laden clothing and fast cars. They like to golf and to prioritise their health; they are highly motivated to educate their children privately, expensively and, most interestingly for Luxembourg, internationally. Switzerland, a country of comparative similarity to Luxembourg, is the fastest growing educational destination for the newly affluent Chinese entrepreneurial class.

After years of stacking their party power structures with com-pliant scholars, military figures and proletariat, starting with perhaps Nixon’s overture to Mao Zedong in the 1970s, the 1990’s saw the loosening of Marxist tradition.

Similar to Chambers of Commerce

The country is run by a complex set of internal and external parties that act as judiciaries one upon the other and local powerbrokers and trade associations not much different from our chambers of commerce.

Chinese officials who govern the party and its affiliate structures are wealthy indeed.

The 70 wealthiest party officials have acquired more money in 2012 alone than the combined worth of all 535 members of US Congress, the president, his cabinet and all nine Supreme Court judges. In one year.

Whew.

So the 64 million dollar question is: did they acquire that wealth whilst in office or first make their fortunes and then get appointed to leadership?

Current statistics indicate much of that wealth is self-made.

“These are incredibly proud people, possessed of super-human focus,” said Hoogewerf. “In our entrepreneurial age, they have gained their public position by virtue of their ability in the private sector.”

Not strictly Communist

But it was perhaps Chinese Ambassador Zeng Xianqi (photo), who subtly delivered the most poignant remark: “China’s Commu-nist Party has 80 million members but the Chinese population is 1.3 billion, so we choose not to call China a Communist country in the same vein that we do not say Luxembourg is a strictly Chris-tian-democratic country. China has always been and likely will remain a socialist country that practises its socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

China is in transition, but its roots are communal and have largely favoured the overall welfare of the people at the expense of the individual. As China addresses its industrial coming-of-age under the hyper florescent lights of the world’s media circus, they are try-ing very hard to balance this historic departure from collectivism, whilst bringing up the many on the fortunes of the few.

Saying anything else at this point would just be speculation.

Chinese leaders may be wealthy, but a conference has argued they are not so different from those in the West.

CAPITALISM IN COMMUNIST CHINA

How much money do you need to be a happy in a moneyless society?

“If you can’t explain it to a layman,” the old adage goes, “you aren’t an expert” could not have been more appropri-ate than Monday morning, when Michael Ferguson, head of asset management at Ernst & Young in Luxembourg, delivered a succinct and compelling argument for the continuance of the hedge fund industry to a small, attentive audience in Merl.

Hedge fund managers are the “best of the best,” representing US$2 trillion in assets of the overall global pie that is roughly worth $53 trillion. Following a motto that is individualist, against the grain, these managers pursue a strategy that Ferguson calls “conviction management”, a style that is heavy on research, thought, analysis and unconventional tailor-made approaches to under-valued and over looked companies.

“One of the extraordinary things about hedge fund managers,” said Ferguson, “is that the best very rarely have finance degrees. They come into the industry from some other field, something that is research heavy, like biology, science or engineering.”

This message in particular could not have been delivered to a more appropriate audience. It is somehow telling that the most complex issues of today’s socio-economic landscape should be addressed by a world authority and delivered to high school students at the International School of Luxembourg. That unique, creative thinking permit-ted--even encouraged--in the hedge fund industry is exactly in line with Ferguson’s host, the ISL’s Young Enterprise class, something of a start-up lab, encouraging students to start businesses of their own, incorporate actual compa-nies, make and sell products or services and, most importantly, acquire the skills to compete in the global economy.

In that spirit, the country is promoting courses like ISL’s Young Enterprise, part of a major nation-wide attempt to inculcate an entrepreneurial mindset into the youth of Luxembourg, entitled Jonk Entrepreneuren.

Despite the economic crisis, the hedge fund market is growing and Luxembourg’s share in it represents nearly 10% of the total industry worldwide--something the Grand Duchy’s leaders hope will grow. Due to Luxembourg’s political stability, legal framework and unique ability to “passport” funds throughout the world, Ferguson contends that Luxembourg will increasingly become a major exporter of hedge funds, which will be a source of major, top level employment in the country.

ISL director Chris Bowman commented that having this message expressed by such a knowledgeable and highly respected person as Ferguson provides just the confirmation and incentive that the country’s students need.

But in the final analysis, the usefulness of a world class authority is in their ability to make very complex things very understandable.

“Think of futures derivatives as a farmer who agrees today the contract price for his crop which he will deliver to a market once it is harvested,” said Ferguson. “It is just the basic ‘futures contract’ that has been around for centuries.”

The Q&A between Ferguson and the students was perhaps most illustrative of this point. No matter how important the specialist, business always remains, in principle, a simple endeavour with a stated aim. “Do you have any tips on how we can make more money?” one student asked.

“My wife asks me that every day,” said Ferguson, to appreciative laughter.

One of Luxembourg’s leading fund executives has given a group of entrepreneurial high school students a practical primer on hedge funds and derivatives.

NOT HEDGING THE NEXT GENERATION

Luxind Consulting – Founder 2009-PresentStaff Writer – The Hindu, India’s National Paper 2006-08Freelance journalist – The Moscow Times 2002-04Prospects magazine – Founder, Editor 2003

Under the umbrella of Luxind Consulting S.àr.L, my Luxembourg holding, I contract my business consultancy and brand journalism services to international clients.

I am currently writing the definitive history of British American Tobacco during the Cold War. My client is Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP Advertising Agency, the largest of its kind globally and BAT is its largest account.

Recent clients include Government of Luxembourg as the current Prime Minister developed the nation branding platform during its hosting of the 2015 EU Presidency. My brief was to reposition Luxembourg’s image internationally away from Bank Secrecy towards Data Storage.

75+ clients including Bank of China, Banque de Luxembourg, University of Luxembourg, ChinaLux bi-lateral chamber.

CONSULTING BRAND JOURNALISM.

EDUCATION.Luxembourg School for Commerce//Business AdministrationCambridge University Officer Corps// British Army University of East Anglia // MA Creative WritingDalhousie University// BA English and Russian University of Malta// ErasmusKings College//Foundation Year Programme

Led communications seminars for schools and businesses, including French traders at Bank of New York Mellon.

I tutor disadvantaged Somalian refugee children as part of a registered UK charity at the weekends in South London.

TUTOR & MENTOR.

PCPAUL COMRIE

[email protected]

paulcomrie.com

Old StreetLondon

United Kingdom

CoMétier Co-Founder + Chief Content Officer