Word: baron
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Many Japanese corporations consider it a necessary status symbol to hang a Matisse or a Renoir in their VIP reception rooms. Japan's newly rich are also well aware that such art is now a good investment. One Osaka real estate baron recently won fame in the trade by phoning an art dealer these directions: "Get me 100 million yen [$330,000] worth of art-get me whatever you think would prove moneymaking." Japanese art buyers are operating like Sony executives all over Europe and the U.S. "No hammers go down nowadays either at Christie's or Sotheby...
Operating a winter resort can be as tricky as schussing blindfolded. "Two or three years ago people were saying that there was white gold in those hills," says Baron Edmond Rothschild, who owns part of France's Megeve resort. "Well, there isn't any to be found. The trouble with skiing is that the season is too short." In the West, the season often lasts only from Thanksgiving to late April, about 150 days. In milder climates the business is even more precarious. Tennessee's Viking Mountain area folded last year after trying to survive...
Brokers on the Paris Bourse had never seen anything like it. At least not over something so mundane as a disposable ballpoint pen. Last month, when Baron Marcel Bich sold a fraction of his pen company's 1,500,000 shares to the French public, investors went into a frenzy over Société Bic. On opening day there were offers for 8,000,000 shares, but only 300,000 were made available; the price promptly jumped from $176 to $208. Helped by that rise, Baron Bich's holdings in the company that he controls increased...
...schools, offices and households of 96 countries. Nearly a billion and a half Bics are rolled out of 20 plants round the world every year according to company officials; they account for one-third of the world's ballpoint total, and production has been rising 10% annually. Baron Bich has done for ballpoints what Henry Ford did for cars: he has produced a cheap but serviceable model...
...stick close to reality, like a surfer to his board. We don't lean forward or backward too far or too fast. We ride the wave at the right moment." Bic is now skimming along the crest of a 72% sales increase over the past five years. The baron hopes that with the disposable Bic lighter another big breaker may be in sight...