Word: taipans
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...thing you'll face as a survivor. Then again, "Survivor"'s on-site physician, Adrian Cohen, told People magazine that participants were also up against five species of deadly snakes, "all of them... incredibly mean." Which is an overstatement, says Lilley. The snakes, particularly the brown snake and the taipan, can be vicious (and three crew members were bitten during production) but mostly the problems come in the summer. The series was filmed in the rainy season, making for sleepy, sluggish reptiles who would almost certainly slink away as soon as they sensed the vibrations of footsteps. And those nasty...
...admits. Even the saintly Albert Schweitzer, who went out of his way to avoid stepping on bugs, didn't hesitate to shoot the beings whose distinguishing characteristics are a slithering gait, a forked tongue and hypodermic-needle fangs that can (if they belong to Australia's cobra-like inland taipan) deliver enough venom in a single bite to kill 200,000 mice...
...turbulence of the times may have prompted Jardines to turn to a hyperfast-tracking American as the new taipan. Born in Massapequa, N.Y., Powers graduated from Yale, where he played football, and got a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1974. He began his career with the blue- chip Manhattan law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, then worked as a money manager for the Ford Foundation and as an investment banker for James D. Wolfensohn Inc. At Wolfensohn, Powers put together several deals for Simon Keswick, the outgoing taipan...
Keswick (pronounced keh-zik), the seventh taipan of that name to run Jardines since its founding in 1832, was impressed, and persuaded Powers to join the company in 1986 as chief strategist. Powers helped engineer a ! restructuring that reduced the firm's debt load and bolstered its earnings. The company's profits surged 64% in 1987, to a record $100.4 million...
...absorbed a lot of the 19th century trader's ethos. Regarding future acquisitions, he declares, "We don't care what industry it's in, as long as it's a good buy." To keep its far-flung empire flourishing, Jardines may have picked just the right taipan...