Word: barone
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lady luck has always seemed to smile on Baron Ernest-Antoine Seillière de Laborde. Born into the wealthy De Wendel family, inheritors of an 18th century iron and steel dynasty, Seillière rose effortlessly through the ranks of France's ruling élite. After taking his degree from the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration, he launched a promising diplomatic career, served on the staffs of two Prime Ministers and seemed destined for a privileged life in the upper echelons of the French civil service...
...Lately, however, the baron's luck has turned bad: a financial time bomb has exploded under his feet. Seillière's troubles started when a friend persuaded him to invest $40 million for a 51% stake in the private French airline AOM in 1999. Though Seillière knew nothing about the airline business, he was assured that SAirGroup, the parent company of Swissair, would manage everything. More than Seillière's money, the Swiss needed him to serve as majority shareholder because European Union regulations bar non-E.U. investors from controlling E.U. companies...
...million a month into the ailing French company but was unable to convince Seillière to cough up another cent. Though officially the majority shareholder, Seillière insisted that he was only a financial partner and that SAirGroup was responsible for managing the crisis. Declared the baron: "We are not the pilot in this matter, we are the passenger...
...Socially and artistically, the Houses were flourishing. In 1951, for example, Adams House put on Johan Strauss' operetta "Gypsy Baron." Students in Dunster House--known as "Funsters"--staged Donizetti's "Anna Bolena." In Eliot House, the play that year was Ben Johnson's "Every Man in His Honor." After selling out "H.M.S. Pinafore" the year before, Winthrop House put on Gilbert and Sullivan's "Yeoman of the Guard...
Send the architects south. Silicon Valley may be powerless and profitless, but Houston, the nation's energy capital and home to the oil-baron excesses of the 1980s, is back in "bidness." The energy giants in Texas have big fat wallets these days--and even bigger construction plans. Not since the boom days of 1982, when trophy architects like Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei reconfigured the skyline, has Houston seen so much construction activity by the energy sector...