Articles

  • THE ART OF BEING DIFFERENT
    Written for Caribbean Beat Issue No. 73 – May/June 2005 by Maggie Lee. The London-based Institute of International Visual Arts has earned a reputation for working with Caribbean artists. As inIVA gets to work on its new headquarters building, Maggie Lee investigates its role in promoting Caribbean art and talks to chairman Stuart Hall about plans ...
  • NOT ALL TALK
    A strong coffee with the founders of speech-to-text telecom Spinvox
  • EARLY DISCLOSURE
    In the discreet world of private equity, Permira, with a mission to promote the sector and funds sufficient to buy billion-euro businesses, is unusually open about its business.
  • Light Movers
    Maggie Lee watches physicists and dancers working together to explain Einstein to everyone.
  • MAN WITH THE MIDAS TOUCH
    Written for Caribbean Beat March/April 2008 (Issue 90) Chris Blackwell turned Jamaican reggae singers into global stars. Now, as Maggie Lee reports, he’s turning a famous Jamaican estate into a global attraction. Chris Blackwell, the legendary founder of Island Records, who brought reggae and Bob Marley to the attention of the world, is focusing on Jamaica once ...
  • Sameer al-Ansari: Liverpool he lost, but could there be a Dubai connection in the bidding for Northern Rock?
    Written for the Independent on Sunday, Nov 4, 2007, by Maggie Lee. Maggie Lee meets the head of an investment company with royal approval, founded just three years ago and already making waves in the UK. Sameer al-Ansari, founder and chairman of Dubai International Capital, chooses his words carefully. Asked whether his fledgling company could be ...
  • Ian Anderson: When he who pays the piper doesn’t get to call the tune then who’s as thick as a brick?
    Written for the Independent on Sunday, Aug 26, 2007, by Maggie Lee. He still isn’t too old to rock ‘n’ roll and he was never too young to be wise about business. Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson talks to Maggie Lee. The only thing I regret about my musical career is the name of the band,” says Ian ...
  • Meet a lord of havoc
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Mar 18, 2007 by Maggie Lee. Colin Kingsnorth, the cofounder of Laxey Partners, is keen to set the record straight about the secretive nature of hedge funds. “Contrary to popular belief, we adopt a Warren Buffett approach, investing in undervalued companies as opposed to underperforming ones,” he says. “We’re also very ...
  • Gerald Ratner: ‘Why didn’t I write a book before? It wouldn’t have had a happy ending’
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 by Maggie Lee. Gerald Ratner is upbeat. Three years since his return to the jewellery business, his wholesale and internet retail company, trading as Gerald Online, has broken even. “We’ve been lucky,” he says, “2003 turned out to be a good time to launch an online business selling ...
  • Gadget fever
    Written for the Independent on Sunday, Jan 14, 2007 by Maggie Lee. Leaving aside the debut of WowWee’s robotic Elvis, it was a sober and collaborative affair at CES (the world’s largest consumer electronics show) in Las Vegas last week. In 2006, celebrities graced just about every keynote speech. But this year the universal message from industry ...
  • Jon Moulton, founder, Alchemy Partners: Dicing with the debt meister
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Oct 29, 2006 by Maggie Lee. Making money isn’t enough for Britain’s top private-equity investor. What really excites him is the challenge of taking on failing companies. Jon Moulton, founder and managing partner of the private-equity firm Alchemy, has never shied from speaking his mind. “We’re looking at an overheated market ...
  • Stem cell research: No ‘voodoo magic’. But maybe a miracle
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Oct 31, 2004 by Maggie Lee. The biotech industry may not have woken up to it yet, but a Saudi doctor’s accidental discovery could herald a new future for one of medical science’s most controversial breakthroughs. Maggie Lee reports. Stem cell research has become a much talked of issue in the ...
  • Analysis: Shut out of the male and pale boardroom
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Dec 12, 2004 by Maggie Lee. `When I see a shortlist that includes a woman and someone from an ethnic minority, I automatically veer towards them. It’s hard for anyone to climb the greasy pole and all other factors being equal, I tend to assume that women and minorities have ...
  • Brainpower pumps up the patents at Ark: Technology: Cardiovascular
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Feb 27, 2005 by Maggie Lee. John Martin, professor of cardiovascular science at University College London and founder of Ark Ther-apeutics, is a man known to the police. It goes back to his student days. “I was driving an ice-cream van during the day and studying to get into med ...
  • ‘Hysterical and passionate’ ” he doesn’t act casual but he knows how
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, May 8th, 2005 by Maggie Lee. Johnnie Boden is a walking advertisement for his brand. Fresh- faced, slim and casually attired, the former public schoolboy looks just the sort of person who’d buy clothes from the Boden catalogue. The entrepreneur is also very candid, admitting that he regards failure as a ...
  • Harry Goodman: He got his wings burnt but he’s back for more: the third coming of a travel tycoon
    Written for the Independent on Sunday, Jul 17, 2005 by Maggie Lee. Harry Goodman is just about to launch his third travel empire. The legendary leisure tycoon says he wants to set up ‘a specialist upmarket travel operation aimed at the grey market with worldwide cruising as its base’. His plan is to ‘buy one or two ...
  • THE INTERVIEW: Charlotte Semler – Too sexy for the money men, too
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Jul 24, 2005 by Maggie Lee. Sex sells, they say, but sometimes even the lure of money is not enough to conquer the reserve of investment houses. Five years ago, Charlotte Semler and Nina Hampson, a former advertising executive and retail consultant respectively, noticed the burgeoning growth of the sex-accessory industry ...
  • Grenada’s ill wind
    Written for www.opendemocracy.net, September 22nd, 2005 by Maggie Lee. Many Caribbean communities have faced the challenge of recovering from natural disaster. Maggie Lee visits Grenada, devastated by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and is surprised by the creative recovery plans of the “island of perpetual potential”. The small eastern Caribbean island of Grenada gained fleeting international notoriety (and ...
  • Football: Leo’s cheeky message to his old mate Sven
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Feb 26, 2006 by Maggie Lee. On a recent visit to the island of Trinidad, her home as a child, Maggie Lee met Leo Beenhakker, the Dutch coach of World Cup novices Trinidad and Tobago. An adopted hero, the Dutchman explains why he took on the challenge of scouting for ...
  • Toujours poetry, toujours Provence
    Written for the Independent on Sunday, Apr 9, 2006 by Maggie Lee. L’Occitane is not a brand name that slides easily into the vernacular of Britons and Americans. Marketing experts might argue that this “foreign-ness” and lack of instant appeal presents a huge challenge for a company generating more than a third of its revenues in ...
  • ITV refugee Desmond resurfaces as adviser to Chinese television
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Apr 23, 2006 by Maggie Lee. Seven months on from his surprise news that he was leaving ITV, Mick Desmond, the former chief executive of ITV Broadcasting, is back helping a Chinese television group eyeing the British market. Mr Desmond has accepted an international advisory role with the Hunan Broadcasting Company, ...
  • Sir Michael Smurfit, Chairman, Smurfit Kappa: ‘They used to look on me as a Paddy chancing his luck. It’s a mistake they only made once’
    Written for The Independent on Sunday, Aug 27, 2006 by Maggie Lee. The Irish tycoon might have sold his packaging empire but he still has plenty on his plate, like the Ryder Cup. Sir Michael Smurfit is on a roll. The Irish paper and packaging tycoon is about to realise one of his cherished ambitions: in September, ...