Table of contents for 11 - The Celebration Issue in BILLIONAIRE

When I was 18 or 19, the Special Olympics, the world’s largest sports organisation for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, was held in Austria where I was studying. Many foreign students at the university volunteered to help and I was to chaperon the national team from South Africa, the country of my birth. Little did I know what an eye-opening experience lay ahead. On several occasions I had to ask myself whom the ‘disabled’ individuals were: was it me or the remarkable athletes I came to know and saw compete? It was a true celebration of life and a lesson in humility. I came to recognise my inabilities and limitations, and accept that others, whether intellectually or physically challenged, were far ahead of myself in so many fields. This…

Japan exists as an undefinable mystery. Quirky and enigmatic, it’s a heady mix of old and new, a place of beguiling natural beauty alongside urban overload. Beyond skyscrapers, robots and bullet trains, this vast nation remains cloaked in a veil of spirituality that has guided people’s lives for centuries. This, it could be said, is what encapsulates the country’s true essence. Japan’s spiritual landscape centres around Kumano’s seven trails meandering through the Kii Peninsula’s mountains and valleys. This is the home of the gods. Here, a series of sacred paths, grand shrines (Nachi Taisha, Hongu Taisha and Hayatama Taisha) and towns such as Koyasan have all attracted pilgrims for more than 1,000 years. Collectively named The Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, its ancient Kumano Kodo…

What is the best investment that Ted Turner, 79-year-old billionaire founder of Cable News Network (CNN), has ever made? A US$1 billion gift in 1997 to the United Nations (UN), which was used to launch the UN Foundation. “The gift was one of the best investments I have ever made,” says Turner, over interview by email. “The investment I made 20 years ago to start the UN Foundation will continue to pay dividends in health, peace, and progress for the world.” Since its inception, the foundation has worked directly with the UN and other partners to help reduce measles and polio; to provide anti-malaria bed nets to families in Africa; to increase support for voluntary family planning; to promote the rights of girls and women; and to tackle climate change…

Olivier Krug, the eldest of Henri Krug’s five children, grew up next door to the Krug cellars in Reims, immersed in the sights, sounds and aromas filling the courtyard during Champagne-making time. After studying business and economics, he joined the family company (now LVMH-owned) in 1989 at the age of 22 and spent more than two years in Japan, where Krug was practically unknown. Today, the country is the house’s most important market, followed by the US. Krug went on to take up various positions within the company while serving as a full member of the wine team and working alongside his father, before becoming director of the house in 2009. Founded in 1843 by Joseph Krug, the firm doesn’t reveal production volumes or sales figures, although Krug is thought…

Sputniko! is in a league of her own, cross-examining multiple genres in technology, science, art, biology and society in creating her avant-garde artworks. “For feminism to spread in Japan, we have to reach a bigger audience and prove it’s not about how you look. It’s the way you think and act,” she explains. Ironically, Sputniko! uses superhero storylines and anime outfits in order to foster awareness. British/Japanese by origin, she has presented her film, performance and installations internationally in museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. As an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, she feeds into a discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Billionaire caught up with her. You are known for…

The end of the year always seems a good time to give thanks for everything we are blessed with, even if we don’t always appreciate it. As a new mum, I could probably count the nights of uninterrupted sleep I’ve had on one hand since the birth of my son. But I couldn’t count the moments of laughter and love my little boy has brought me, and continues to, each day. This issue is dedicated to celebration, because amid all the bad news we read it is easy to forget all that is good in the world. And there is much of it. We start with a celebration of cultural differences, delving into rites, rituals, dancing and festivities in Tahiti (p40), Indonesia (p24) and Brazil (p36), before taking a spiritual…

Around 420km from Manaus in Brazil, deep in the upper region of the great Amazon basin, lies the small island of Tupinambarana, and on it the municipality of Parintins, known proudly by Brazilians as the folklore capital of the world. Once inhabited by Maué, Sapupé and Parintintin Indians and a trading post for goods coming downstream from the Madeira River towards the Atlantic, now Parintins is famous for holding one of biggest parties in Brazil: a celebration of indigenous culture, held every year during the last three days of June, called the Boi Bumba. This is an explosion of light and music, folklore and symbolism, dance, theatre, and the raw passion of Amazonian culture. Rows upon rows of brightly dressed dancers move in sync to the rhythms of the toada:…

At number 21, Rue des Moulins in charming Neuchâtel, not visible from outside, is a hallway. At the end of a hallway is what appears to be a wine shop. But J.-Ph. Bauermeister Vins Fins is no typical wine shop, and there is little that is typical about the fascinating owner, Jean-Philippe Bauermeister himself. The building actually leads into an ancient cave. It was once the home of an aristocrat, built between the 14th and 18th centuries, with the cave being located in the oldest part and the facade the newest. Bauermeister says it was purely by chance that he discovered it. “In 1972, when I opened, nobody knew of the existence of the cave, because the entry was closed. I discovered it when one of my friends, who lived…

“In the past, people were afraid of touching athletes with one leg or one arm,” recalls Heinrich Popow, a 34-year-old German sprinter and two-time Paralympic World Champion. At the age of nine he had contracted bone cancer, leaving him facing an above-knee amputation. Awaiting surgery in a hospital bed, he was visited by Paralympic racing cyclist Arno Becker. Becker lifted his trouser leg to reveal his prosthetic limb, and promised the boy he would be able to do everything, just as before, although he would have to “work a bit harder than everyone else”. Because of his vocation, Popow no longer feels disabled. “Paralympic sport changed my life. It gave me the possibility of showing people what we are able to do.” Now Popow is a regular face at hospitals…

If you think of most of the world’s great entrepreneurs, they started their rise to the top in their teens, says Bill Drayton, founder of global citizen sector organization Ashoka. Richard Branson, for example, was 16 when he set up Student magazine, which he managed from a phone booth. His idea to sell advertising for discounted music records in the back would become the foundations of Virgin Music. While in high school Mark Zuckerberg was a voracious computer programmer, building a software program to link computers in his house to those in his father’s dental practice, called ZuckNet. Bill Gates meanwhile, wrote his school’s computer program to schedule students in classes, modifying the code so that he was placed in classes with a “disproportionate number of interesting girls”. As a…

On the site of a vast car park in the disused docklands of Santander now hovers Centro Botín, an €80 million museum bankrolled by Fundación Botín, the charitable foundation launched in the 1960s by Santander’s banking dynasty family. The Renzo Piano-designed building is at once transformational and yet modest. Double-lobed, like car-door wing mirrors, covered in 280,000 round pearly ceramic tiles, the museum reflects the sun and sparkle from the water below. Cantilevered on slender white 6m pillars, it appears to ‘float’ above the ground, extending 20m over the sea, allowing unlimited views of the bay for the many pedestrians strolling its gardens. The project restores the pedestrian access between the historic part of the city, the ancient Jardines de Pereda, and the waterfront, while the road that once divided…

When it comes to getting attention for its Norwegian artistic output, Trondheim, Johan Börjesson concedes, is not Oslo. But, slowly, a shift is happening thanks to, as Börjesson, director of the Trondheim Kunstmuseum, puts it, “a new prize from very old money”. Indeed, the Lorck Schive Art Prize, which was awarded last month, is unusual in more ways than hailing from Norway’s third city. It happens to be one of the world’s oldest art prizes, the product of a trust established in 1878 by local landowners Christian Lorck Schive and his wife Marine Wille. A lesson in the smart, philanthropic distribution of assets, for generations whenever the youngest of any children in the family reached 25, one-fifth of the annual income was assigned to the city, with the remaining shares…

The sky is still dark when the rato, the spiritual leaders of Sumba’s villages, walk down to the shore to look for nyale sea worms. These small green worms are the harbingers of the Sumbanese harvest, the foretellers of feast or famine. “My family had two very good years of harvest, predicted by the sea worms,” says Simpson, a 29-year-old Sumbanese who works at one of the island’s only non-state employers: ‘barefoot luxury’ resort Nihiwatu. Millennial, well educated, with a camera phone and scooter, Simpson seems to belong to a different time and place, one that stands in defiance of modernity. “If the sea worms are biting each other, the harvest will be infested with rats,” explains Simpson. “If the sea worms are chopped, the harvest will be bad. If…

There’s a sense that Florent Milhaud likes the scorching intro to ‘Baker Street’, or the big break in ‘Born in the USA’, every bit as much as he likes Kastner’s pioneering orchestral work ‘Le Dernier Roi de Juda’. “That’s the amazing thing about the saxophone,” he says. “It’s just such a versatile sound as it gets used in all sorts of music: from rock to jazz, funk and R&B to classical. Listen to some jazz and then listen to an orchestral piece and it’s like listening to two different instruments really.” Milhaud thinks about the saxophone a lot. He’s the product manager at H Selmer, French maker of, arguably, the best saxophones in the world. It was this company that set the benchmarks as a specialist in saxophones in the…

I simply wasn’t prepared for that moment when you find yourself in the middle of a family of mountain gorillas. Covered in mud, short of breath after hiking several hours through a steamy rainforest in high altitude, my excitement started ramping up when my guide pointed out a few munched bamboos and asked us to leave our bags behind. The first snores came out of the foliage and, all of the sudden, black fur flashed between the leaves. Two juvenile gorillas came to investigate, while the cutest fuzzy baby tumbled from trees to grab my hand. In theory, visitors should never get closer than 7m but gorilla etiquette tends to flout human rules. Peering into those liquid-brown eyes was one of the most intimate, powerful, experiences of my life. The…

The Quest is a permanent art installation designed by Ersin Han Ersin, principal of design agency Marshmallow Laser Feast, inside Hennessy’s historical property in Cognac. Exploring uncharted territories, the new-age sculpture refers to a quest, both literally and metaphorically. For one might not be aware of the level of precision required to craft a bottle of Paradis Impérial and the unique expertise at play. Generations of master blenders select, educate and age the cognac. Then, only 10 cognacs are handpicked out of 10,000 to compose a ‘perfect’ version. Like a virtuoso composer, it takes many iterations to achieve perfect harmony. Inside the maison’s oldest chais built in 1774, past 19th century brandies, bottled in large wax-sealed glass containers, and an incredible line-up of oak barrels, one enters an almost empty…

Perfect Strangers When Hurricane Sandy tore through New York in 2012, tens of thousands of people became homeless overnight. One woman had an idea. Through Airbnb, she wanted to volunteer her spare bedrooms to help those in need, but she didn’t want to get paid for it. “It was funny because when she emailed us the idea, we didn’t actually have a system in place to allow volunteering of rooms for free,” recalls 36-year-old Joe Gebbia, one of three cofounders of the US$31 billion shared housing platform. So ensued a 24-hour software engineering marathon to invent the capability. What started as one woman’s idea, within days became a movement of compassion and hospitality with over 1,000 people offering their spare rooms for free. Airbnb also waives its fees on these…

A glance at international catwalks show that they are no longer exclusively populated by leggy teenagers. At September’s Paris Fashion Week, Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren and six supermodels of the 1990s strutted down the runway. The fashion industry has finally woken up, realising that men and women who can afford expensive clothes want to see models their own age wearing them. Whereas in the past the 60-plus model would be relegated to lifestyle adverts in lilac cardigans, today there is a plethora of vivacious silver-haired models in high-fashion glossies. Over the next few pages we celebrate four of them. ▶ Maye Musk Catwalk and music video star Maye Musk is not used to being upstaged. Although she will make an exception for her son Elon, billionaire Tesla CEO and one…

The founder of Russian real-estate development firm Capital Group and the owner and chairman of Aman, Vladislav Doronin is as passionate about art and design as he is about elevated hospitality. Here, he shares his thoughts on everything from spiritual Asian art to the business of collecting. What are your earliest memories of art? Growing up in St Petersburg, I was fortunate to be exposed to one of the world’s most famous collections of art and the second-largest art museum in the world, The Hermitage. It was there I first discovered the Suprematists and the Russian avantgarde and, specifically, works by Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Nikolay Punin, Vladimir Tatlin, Lyubov Popova, Pavel Filonov and Aleksandra Ekster. I was drawn to their works because of their geometry and almost musical quality.…

Guillaume Levy-Lambert is a French-born, Singapore-based financier and art collector. With his partner Mark Goh, he is building up MaGMA: a collection that comprises today around 500 works of primarily Asian contemporary art in different media. At the heart of Levy-Lambert’s story is a lifechanging encounter with a Roy Lichtenstein painting. Desk Calendar (1962), which hangs in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Astonishingly, they realised that the calendar highlighted and connected both of their dates of birth. “It was the most magical thing that ever happened,” says Levy-Lambert. In that moment they decided to build their lives together and create a contemporary art collection that celebrates divine providence. Here he describes his favourite art pieces. David Chan CEO of Categories This piece is by a talented Singaporean artist…