A plea for state-owned enterprise, Giorgio Armani turns 91, and the happiness of bestselling author Michael Connelly
You are never too old to get a PhD, thought Hans Smits (75). And so the former boss of Schiphol and the Port of Rotterdam retired five years ago. Now there is a voluminous work of almost 500 pages and he can call himself Dr. Smits. His conclusion: state-owned companies play a crucial role in major social issues, such as the energy transition. 'People have forgotten that Gasunie not only extracted gas from the ground, but also connected the whole of the Netherlands to the gas network at a rapid pace in the 1960s.'
Giorgio Armani is also not one to stop. Even before the Italian fashion designer turns 91 next month, he will present his collection for the summer of 2026. His secret? ' Work is the best medicine.' And that new line is quite something, we read in an extensive profile of the multi-billionaire. Not bad for a failed medical student who ended up in fashion after his military service.
Chance also determined the career of bestselling author Michael Connelly. When he saw a man throw a gun into the bushes as a sixteen-year-old boy, he knew: I want to be a crime journalist. 'If I hadn't experienced that, I wouldn't have sold millions of books now. I would have become a contractor, like my father. You can have talent and a will to work, but you also need luck. And I was very lucky.'
Have a nice Sunday and enjoy reading.
Especially in this time of great social change, state-owned companies can play a key role, thinks former Schiphol CEO Hans Smits. For example, public-private organisations could build wind farms, nuclear power plants or create a national healthcare platform.
Giorgio Armani is almost 91. He looks fragile, but he remains the absolute monarch of Italian fashion, with great international influence. And he is still working.
Crime author Michael Connelly has sold 89 million books and created the unforgettable character Harry Bosch. In his hometown of Los Angeles, he tells how it all began. And that it could have gone differently.
With a sky-high debt, a quarrel between shareholders and a family dispute, the Zeeland Bax Music goes under after 22 years. The entrepreneurial fairy tale of the two teenage brothers from Goes turns out to have grim sides, with a dramatic twist.
If you can't be in a cabinet with populists, how can you take the wind out of their sails? Bas Erlings, former campaign strategist for the VVD, wrote a book about it. Coincidentally, it comes out just as the cabinet with the PVV has fallen.
Cas Oerlemans is one of the few SMEs that already produces green hydrogen itself, which he uses in his factory. He will not earn back the investment in the electrolyser quickly. But in his laborious search for the best energy source for the future, he decided to put down a few hundred thousand for the device. 'Everything is uncertain. Then I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket.'
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