When Damien Hirst was a child, he never thought you could get paid for making art. His mother was a shorthand typist and his father a car salesman. His parents split up when he was 12. After his dad walked out of the family home in Leeds, money was tight at home and although the young Damien loved drawing and art galleries, he thought he'd have to get "a proper job" to make a living.

"We ran out of money and we couldn't pay the bills so we had the electricity cut off and things like that," Hirst, 48, says now. "At school I tried to do technical drawing. I could see that could get you a job whereas I never thought 'artist' could be a job, I never thought artists could get paid."

It was an art foundation course at Jacob Kramer School of Art (now the Leeds College of Art) that convinced Hirst that being an artist could be a proper career. "That blew my mind," he says. Later he moved to London, went to Goldsmiths and his work was snapped up by über-collector Charles Saatchi.

Today, Hirst is believed to be worth more than £200m. One of the most famous artists of modern times, he is seen as the great populariser of conceptual art. It was Hirst who put a shark in formaldehyde, painted spots on a canvas and exhibited a skull encrusted with diamonds with a £50m asking price.

But those formative experiences as a young boy in Leeds have left their mark. For all his success, Hirst still believes in the transformative nature of art for children. It is partly for this reason that, over the past few years, Hirst has been quietly building up his philanthropic work. One of his chosen charities, Kids Company, which works with disadvantaged and vulnerable children in London and Bristol, has benefitted to the tune of more than £2m from his donations. Last month, it was announced that Hirst would be auctioning a painting of Mickey Mouse (reinterpreted as one of his iconic spot paintings) and giving the proceeds to Kids Company. In doing so, Hirst joins a select group of artists, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, invited by Disney to recreate the corporation's most famous mascot. Hirst's Mickey is expected to reach up to £750,000.

"I've always believed art's more powerful than money," he says. "The money's just a sideline. I remember those people who burned £1m and I thought it was disgusting. The K Foundation or something…"

"Yeah." He nods vigorously. "You have to respect money."

Money and art have long been intertwined in Hirst's mind. And it is this that has brought us here today, to Science, the airy central London headquarters of Hirst's art and business empire. The office is filled with his works, including a giant pill capsule and an intricate mosaic of butterflies – even the lavatory is wallpapered with a Hirstian representation of pharmaceutical cabinet contents.

But perhaps the most arresting installation of all is sitting on the sofa next to Hirst in the form of Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder and director of Kids Company, swathed in a bright crimson printed cloak and matching turban, with fluorescent yellow Crocs on her feet.

"The thing is," Batmanghelidjh says, by way of explanation, "I can go from the crack den to the palace and not change outfits."

"Me, too," adds Hirst. "Actually, I think I'm better in the crack den."

The two of them whoop with laughter.

Hirst first got involved with Kids Company in 2007 and has become one of its most generous backers. His donations have been a lifeline for a charity which gets 80% of its income from philanthropy.

"He never asked for public acknowledgement or anything like that," says Batmanghelidjh.

"So there was this funny world where I could see there were times when people were very envious of his success, but I couldn't publicly say: 'Do you realise how much this man is contributing?'"

Hirst interjects drily: "It's just not very rock'n'roll." He shifts in his seat, rolling up the sleeves of his leather bomber jacket and tapping his trainers on the floor. Hirst's attention is mercurial, his speech so rapid he seems constantly on the verge of impatience.

"A lot of people give stuff to charity to make themselves feel good," he says. "When I started off, I didn't have much money. I had an interest in art – don't know where it came from – and art helped me get where I've gone. So you do feel you want to give something back, but you don't feel you need to be acknowledged for that. It's a lot nicer to just do it."

But might there not be another reason – an attempt, perhaps, to rebrand himself? Over the past few years, Hirst has got divorced, gone sober and bought up most of Ilfracombe (arguably one of the most sedate places in Britain). Is his decision to talk about his philanthropic work connected to a deeper re-evaluation, an impending sense of his own mortality?

"I think I've constantly re-evaluated since I was seven," Hirst says blithely. "You get older, you get calmer, hopefully you get wiser, but death is unknowable. It doesn't matter how old you are, you still can't get your mind around it."

The work of Kids Company focuses on the needs of neglected inner-city children in London and Bristol, including the most deprived and at-risk whose parents are unable to care for them due to their own practical and emotional challenges. The charity's services reach 36,000 children and support 18,000 who need more intensive attention.

A key part of this is art therapy: Kids Company is the biggest employer of arts psychotherapists after the NHS, and Hirst has been actively involved in developing its programme. "What happens to traumatised children is they freeze often in shock and one of the first things that goes is their verbal abilities to describe the situation," explains Batmanghelidjh. By working with art therapists, the hope is that these children can eventually "start showing the trauma through the art materials… and they tend to have very powerful, emotional pieces that come almost from the bleakest spaces that they've gone to".

She mentions the case of a nine-year-old girl who, when Batmanghelidjh first met her, had been subjected to years of sexual abuse by a family member and who was "crawling on the ground and kind of howling and getting inside the cupboard in a foetal position". After six months of patient counselling and art therapy, "the transformation was extraordinary". The next time she saw the girl, says Batmanghelidjh, "She was sitting there with ribbons in her hair and was really girly-girly, with her box of little art materials cases all lined up."

Art for these children, just as it was for Hirst, is a necessary means of expression. In 2009, Batmanghelidjh launched an initiative in which she asked 125 schoolchildren to use a shoebox to recreate a room from their home. The results were startling: one in six of the shoeboxes threw up child-protection issues.

"They told us things like: 'I feed the rats in the cupboard'; they talked about firearms being hidden; they talked about sexual abuse," says Batmanghelidjh.

In order to raise the necessary cash to work with these children, she got in touch with Hirst and asked him to get a group of famous artists together to create their own shoebox rooms which were then stacked on top of each other like a tower block. The results were auctioned off, raising more than £200,000.

"Camilla's great like that with those kind of ideas," Hirst says. "I mean, I get emails saying 'We're [auctioning off] artists' underpants, artists' shoes and artists' shirts and artists' mugs,' but to do something like that – making a tower block, keeping it simple – it's a great idea."

The children relate to Hirst's art, says Batmanghelidjh, because "his work is daring. It has a 'Why not?' attitude". Hirst, too, sees the best art as unapologetically child-like, quoting Brancusi's famous dictum that: "When we are no longer children, we are already dead."

"I think a lot of people will say my work is childish or child-like and I think neither of those things is a bad thing," he says. "The world's a very complicated place and sometimes you look at it and you feel like a child and that's the sort of best viewpoint. In the face of the world, we're always children."

He encourages his own children – Connor 18, Cassius 13, and eight-year-old Cyrus – to create. Hirst split up from his wife, fashion designer Maia Norman, in 2012 and seems to have adapted well to single parenthood, moving his sons into a big house in Richmond, in the leafy London suburbs. (He also owns Toddington Manor, a stately home in Gloucestershire, plus a farm in Devon and houses in Mexico and Thailand). Children, he says, can produce "much better" art than adults. "I took my eight-year-old when he was about five to my studio for the first time. And when we got back he got a TV box, made a circle, put a chair in the middle and taped an umbrella to it over the top and put his own drawings on the wall and he sat in the middle and said: 'My studio's better than yours.'" Hirst grins. "You just go: 'Wow.'"

Adults, by contrast, are more hamstrung by their anxieties. "You get an adult going: 'How many coats [of paint] should I use? What if it's bad?' And they get the fear, whereas kids just dive in, throw it all around."

As a child, Hirst used to visit a local museum in Leeds where works of art were hung in the same rooms as stuffed Bengal tigers and fish in huge aquariums. He remembers being stunned both by the scale and the anarchic atmosphere – both qualities which he tries to bring to his own work. For Hirst, size most definitely matters. "What I quite like to do is take [my children's] ideas to another level sometimes," he says. "My 18-year-old came home one day and he'd made a huge mosquito out of plastic boxes and it had a straw for a point and wings made with string, so I took them to the foundry and had it cast in bronze, the same size. It's not a massive effort to do that."

Perhaps not if your father has access to a foundry. The issue with a lot of the children Batmanghelidjh deals with is that they don't have anyone to take their art home to – let alone the opportunity to cast it in a precious metal. Instead, she encourages them to make objects and pictures that are sent as thank-yous to key donors. The vibrant, painted chair on which my Dictaphone lies is one such piece – it is covered with colourful patterns and every available bit of space has a message of thanks scrawled across it. Once, Hirst recalls, he took delivery of a table from Kids Company. "And they'd obviously been told to write something nice on it. So it was all: 'You're great, we love you, thank you so much' and then on the back someone wrote: 'Whatever.'" He snorts with laughter. "I love that."

It's the kind of rebellious attitude that would appeal to Hirst, who, when he first started out, was often described as the "enfant terrible" of the art world. That stopped, he says, "as soon as I started making any money, as soon as I could get tables at my favourite restaurants an hour before… You start off kicking against the system and then you become the thing to be kicked against. I definitely feel more mainstream than outsider now."

In fact, Hirst is often accused of being too mainstream. His work has been derided as shallow, overly commercial and derivative. Critics have lambasted him for not producing his own art – Hirst famously got his assistants to produce thousands of spot paintings that bear his signature – and for making money from what they see as little more than clever marketing. His diamond-encrusted skull, entitled For the Love of God, was condemned by the critics for its "vulgarity" and "decorative" nature when Hirst put it up for auction in 2007.

But one teenager at Kids Company saw it differently. "The diamond skull inspired one of our kids to do a piece on how trauma kills off your soul," says Batmanghelidjh. "He'd seen the skull and then he started doing this whole funeral piece of skull heads. It was extraordinary – and it was all because of seeing Damien's diamond skull. He did this piece about how child abuse had basically murdered pieces of him… It was very haunting."

How does hearing a story like that make Hirst feel? "The word is 'inspirational', isn't it?" he replies. "In my mind, when I imagine my audience, it's always a single person looking at my artwork. I'm aware that I make things for people to hook on to and connect to, but it's vague in my mind, so when you hear about a specific which is definite and somebody connects to it…" he trails off.

For Batmanghelidjh, art has an even deeper resonance. She sees it as an example of "audacity… and I think the same cycle needs to be conceptualised in social care. You have to have the audacity to say: 'This is unacceptable' and come up with an alternative."

"The defence budget is £42.4bn," continues Batmanghelidjh. "The Crossrail budget is about £40bn. The child-protection budget is £113m. And, actually, we've got a catastrophic epidemic of childhood maltreatment in this country. And every so often, you hear about it because there's an inquiry when a child dies, but the death of that one child represents only the pin of a needle compared to the scale of children who've been maltreated behind closed doors."

Hirst, sitting quietly on the sofa as Batmanghelidjh speaks, rubs his eyes with the tips of his fingers. I think briefly that he might be welling up. But when I look again, the slight moistness has gone and his gaze is re-focused. "The world's fucked," he says sharply. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't, no. Not yet," he grins. "I kind of like the idea and I think it's a cop-out not to, but I can't see anything to vote for."

He says people have a tendency to view an artist "like some sort of saviour".

"You get it with Hollywood actors, rock stars [people saying]: 'Don't sell out, don't sell out!'" he says. "There's a sort of desperation that money taints and poisons everything… Money's a big issue. It's as complex as love in the world today. As an artist, I think you should take that on and look at it."

Money and love: the two, in Hirst's mind, seem inextricably linked. It's not that he thinks of money as a substitute for love, but at least it's a start. At least it can help to change the lives of deprived and vulnerable children. It can give them a voice and a vision. It can, as Hirst would put it, go some way towards making the world that little bit less fucked.

Damien Hirst's Mickey will be auctioned at Christie's in London on 13 February (christies.com)

Summary: When Damien Hirst's spot-painting of Mickey Mouse is sold, the money will go to Kids Company. Elizabeth Day meets him – and the charity's founder Camila Batmanghelidjh – to hear how art saved his own childhood, and why it's crucial for so many vulnerable kids


Q. I had a nice-looking red brick patio installed in my backyard, then had a new exterior door installed. Now there is a gap of a few inches between the bottom of the door and the patio, so the installer filled the gap with plaster, which is already beginning to melt away. What can I do?

- Tom Wall, South End

A. I hope that the door has a proper threshold on its bottom, because a threshold of oak is the only thing that will make the door weatherproof. If not, have one installed. First get rid of the plaster, which is not the thing to use outdoors. It depends on how thick the gap is. If a threshold, sloped to all water runoff, fits in the gap, that is good. If there is a little more to the gap, put in a pressure-treated board to make up the difference. If there is still a gap, you can build a berm of concrete or bricks to close the gap.

Q. You mentioned a good pipe wrap for pipes that have lost their asbestos insulation on a steam heat system, but I have forgotten. I have to tell my contractor what it is. Can you?

A. It is compressed fiberglass. The contractor should know, and also will know what is needed to insulate the steam boiler.

Q. I live in a three-decker which has back porches off the second- and third-floor units. The third floor has a tongue-and-groove deck (we’re told it was replaced 10 years ago) that leaks badly. Of course, both porches get wet but the rain also is clearly leaking through the boards. Also, all that damp is peeling the paint on the bottom of the third-floor deck. A contractor told us the problem is that the third-floor porch is laid flat and needs to be rebuilt on a slight incline. Do you think that will fix the problem?

A. Yes, if the third floor deck was sloped a little, it would make a big difference. I would have to guess the third-floor deck is covered by a roof, as in all triple deckers I know. All three decks should be primed and painted with an exterior primer and exterior deck paint.

Q. About a dead mouse in the wall, and the resulting stink. I called an exterminator, who said he could not even try to find the corpse, and suggested just waiting out the smell, which is already abating.

Q. We have tried glue traps, food bags for their consumption, plastic, and wooden snap traps, etc. Anything else we can try? Somehow we remember you wrote about this at another time, but don’t quite remember the answer.

A. To both of you Stumpees, there are not many tricks that will succeed. I had the same thing happen two years ago, and I broke into the wall in several areas with no success. An exterminator searched the wall with his TV scope, a little like a colonoscope, also without success, so he charged only $50. A little later, a fly discovered the corpse, laid hundreds of eggs, which hatched into maggots that escaped to my porch and caused my wife to go absolutely ape and destroyed all she could find. Then came hundreds of flies, which I dispatched with a spray; the next day fewer flies showed up, and on the third day, fewer until all were gone. By that time the smell began to fade, all was sweet again.

Incidentally, using odor killers such as Febreze will not work as long as the source of the stink is still there.

If you have mice and know where they are, using plastic traps are the best way to get ’em all, plus closing every possible access hole in the house, the foundation and the wood sill on top of the foundation. To locate those holes, go in the basement on a bright sunny day and turn out all lights and light sources; you may see holes that you would otherwise miss.

Q. We had our floors sanded and polyurethaned six years ago. Our foldable ironing board gradually scratched a small area. Can this section be locally sanded to remove the scratches and polyurethaned only on the affected area?

A. Yes, sanding the scratched area lightly and applying two or three coats of water-based polyurethane varnish on the scratched area can work. So can coating the scratches with a stain just a little darker than the scratches.

Q. I have a two small-opening windows about 24”x 15” on either side of a large picture window The windows open outward, but now do not work except by going outside and pushing them closed. Can I replace them?

The same picture window is original from 1962. It’s pretty drafty, and I have been thinking about inside storm windows. I do not want to change the appearance of the house it consists of 15 window panels in frames same size as above Any suggestions?

A. Those little windows are casement style (they open like a door), and most replacement windows can replace them. They can be had in a middle price range from some companies. As for the big picture window, inside storms are to come by and are usually room darkeners, too, so I suggest you have it replaced as well.

Summary: Q. About a dead mouse in the wall, and the resulting stink. I called an exterminator, who said he could not even try to find the corpse, and suggested just waiting out the smell, which is already abating.  STUMPED  A. There are not many tricks that will succeed. I had the same thing happen two years ago, and I broke into the wall in several areas with no success.


More a group hug than a group show, this mawkish male-bonding exercise takes its cue from the early 1970s Burt Reynolds vehicle of the same name, where a quartet of butch Atlanta businessmen achieve a testosterone high by canoeing through the most godforsaken backwaters of the Appalachian mountains.

John Boorman's film is a bitter cocktail of machismo, mutilation and revolting backwoods encounters with the products of a steadily diminishing gene pool. As a starting point for four male artists primarily interested in their own masculinity, this has plenty of potential. Who will fulfil the role of the sensitive, guitar-strumming Drew (Ronny Cox in the film) for example? And, more to the point, who wants to be Burt?

Sadly, the movie seems to have done no more than divert the show up Concept Creek without a paddle. Most of the darker undercurrents of the film are avoided, and its impressive ecological message is entirely ignored. Though there are witty and worthwhile individual contributions, there seems little to link the artists besides their all being men; this turns out to be no more illuminating than suggesting that none of them are zebras.

Andrew McDonald takes top honours with his intimidating animation, The Return of John. Confronted with the provocations of an alarmingly headless aggressor, you begin to understand Sir Gawain's predicament with the Green Knight. If you wouldn't hit a man wearing glasses, what are you going to do about a man with nowhere to put them?

Paul Stone's piece, Stay, is reminiscent of Kander and Ebb's image of transparent male insecurity from the musical Chicago, Mister Cellophane; only in this case it's Mister Polythene Bag. At this time of year a disquieting mannequin roughly manufactured from high street carriers can pass as thought-provoking art. Any closer to November 5 and you'd toss it a coin to let the irritating kids who made it buy fireworks.

Pat Flynn's sculptural conceit of bringing the pixilated approximations of computer games to life proves that what we accept as an asteroid on a VDU screen could equally well signify the deposits of a huge cyber-elephant. Yuen Fong Ling's installation indicative of men at work - a pair of seminar flip-charts disgorging reams of unfilled paper - eloquently illustrates the arguments linking the movie and artistic responses together. A nice idea on paper, but ultimately Deliverance fails to deliver.

Until March 31. Details: 0113-283 3130.

Summary: Leeds Metropolitan Studio Gallery   Rating: **


05/10/2014 at 11:45 AM EDT

Scott Cook for Rollins College

It took nine roller-coaster years, but

earned her bachelor degree in psychology on Saturday – and her 3.98 GPA earned her the Class of 2014's top honor, the Hamilton Holt Outstanding Senior Award.

Nordegren, 34, who rarely speaks publicly and gave

to date to PEOPLE on the eve of her 2010 divorce from Tiger Woods, told her fellow Rollins College graduates at the Winter Park, Florida, commencement ceremony that she was surprised – and "a little scared" – when she got the call about the award and the commencement address that comes with it.

After all, she said, "I have been called a 'woman with no words' in the media and criticized for not talking very much."

Nordegren started college courses at Rollins in 2005, when she was married to Woods and did not yet have children, chipping away at her degree sometimes one class at a time. She took a semester off following the birth of each of her children – Sam, now 6, and Charlie, now 5 – and again in 2010, in the wake of the spectacular revelations of infidelity by her then-husband. That period she referred to Saturday as "the wild storm of my personal life."

With Charlie asleep in the audience, Nordegren said to applause: "Education has been the only consistent part of my life the last nine years. And it has offered me comfort. Education is one thing that no one can take away from you."

The Swedish-born American citizen said her fellow students helped her to keep going. "When you told me stories about your full-time day jobs, about coming home to cook dinner for your families, and about making sure your children were cared for while you were attending classes, you inspired me," she said. "Whatever obstacle I was facing at the time, your stories and sharing helped me put things in perspective."

A nanny and one-time model when she met Woods, Nordegren, for whom English is a second language, had a reputation in pro-golf circles for being quiet and reserved. She joked Saturday about how, right after she had taken a class called Communication and the Media, "I was unexpectedly thrust into the media limelight. I probably should have taken more notes in that class!"

In an exclusive interview for an upcoming issue of PEOPLE, Nordegren says that, whatever her initial trepidation, she ultimately embraced Saturday's speaking duties: "If I can inspire even one mom to go back and get her degree with the message that it's never too late, then I am happy."

Summary: After nine years, Nordegren earns her psychology degree from Rollins College, graduating with top honors


05/13/2014 at 02:10 PM EDT

Kelly Rowland and Tim Witherspoon

Kelly Rowland and fiancé Tim Witherspoon enjoyed quite the Costa Rican vacation recently – but was it for their wedding?

The couple arrived in the country together last Thursday and were joined by some notable guests.

According to immigration documents first obtained by

, Rowland's Destiny's Child bandmates,

and Michelle Williams, were in attendance as well as Beyoncé's sister Solange and their mother, Tina.

. There was no official record of him entering or leaving the country.

Though the couple have yet to confirm their nuptials, they are known for doing things simply – and spontaneously!

"He asked me first on Skype,"

in December of the proposal. "And I was like, 'We're so far away from each other.' But it was so late – I remember we were both just kinda like, honestly, just staring at each other. And he asked me, and it was just that simple to say yes. I was like, 'I got my best friend to ride through life with.' He really is my best friend."

After departing from Costa Rica with Witherspoon on Sunday, Rowland was spotted at the 2014 American Ballet Theatre Opening Night Spring Gala in New York City on Monday night.

Summary: The singer and beau Tim Witherspoon vacationed in Costa Rica and may have tied the knot


AstraZeneca has rejected Pfizer’s improved “final” bid of $92 per share, which would have made the British pharmaceutical giant worth about $116 billion, saying that the new offer “undervalues the company and its attractive prospects.”

The pursuit by American firm Pfizer’s, based on a strategy to cut its tax expenses, has been scrutinized out of fears that it would impede AstraZeneca’s drug research and cut jobs.

The debate over a potential takeover has embroiled both politicians and trade unions in the U.K., where AstraZeneca currently employes 6,700 people. AstraZeneca’s shares fell over 13% in early trading after the rejection of the offer.

Summary: The controversial deal, which would have created the world's leading pharmaceutical company, has fallen through as AstraZeneca says the new offer "undervalues the company and its attractive prospects"


05/20/2014 at 11:05 PM EDT

Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews

After a night of big name musical performances, a surprise announcement from a judge, and dances from every couple, it was time to name the winner of season 18 of

Up for the mirror ball trophy were season frontrunners Meryl Davis and Maksim Chmerkovskiy, along with Amy Purdy and Derek Hough and Candace Cameron Bure and

. Read on to find out who won.

After the three couples danced their fusion routines that combined two different ballroom styles, Bure was eliminated first, followed by Purdy.

That meant winter Olympic gold medal ice dancer Davis took the

crown – and made Chmerkovskiy a first-time pro-champ.

"It means so much," Chmerkovskiy said after the big announcement. "If you do it with Meryl, it's a dream come true. There's a reason it didn't happen before. It was meant to happen with this one."

During the night's final dances, Davis and Chmerkovskiy got the most praise from the judges.

"The best part of the season for me was you two," Carrie Ann Inaba told the pair. The other judges agreed and gave them a perfect 30 out of 30.

Purdy and Hough also received a flawless score, with judge Bruno Tonioli telling the Paralympian, "Your dancing is right up there with the best."

Bure and Ballas's routine got a 27, but Tonioli raved about the actress, saying, "You've always been adorable, charming, genuine."

The night was full of highlights, but got off to a rocky start with an awkward performance by Iggy Azalea, who pulled out her ear piece and seemed understandably upset after what appeared to be a technical glitch.

Other musical acts for the night included Ariana Grande (who performed her hit "Problem"). Last season's champ Amber Riley also took center stage.

Head judge Len Goodman, meanwhile, made some news of his own, announcing that this season may be his last.

Summary: Candace Cameron Bure, Amy Purdy and Meryl Davis each went into Tuesday night battling for the coveted mirror ball trophy


It may seem incongruous to think of discarded rubber car tires as the source of fetching but functional footwear or fashion-forward furniture.

But from Kenya to India to Detroit to Sweden, clever and eco-minded niche entrepreneurs are turning one of industrialized society’s most ubiquitous and difficult-to-dispose-of waste products (an estimated 1.5 billion tires are discarded each year worldwide) into weirdly appealing – and super-tough – items with a little bit of, um, soul.

Enterprising locals in Kenya have made a cottage industry out of hand-crafting so-called akala sandals from the “pelts” of old car tires. They sell on the streets of Nairobi for anywhere from $2 to $5 a pair – considerably less than retail footwear sold nearby, and boasting 10 times the longevity.

In fact, Maasai tribesmen, who roam southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, have commonly worn these durable sandals – also known as “thousand-milers” – for decades to walk through brush tougher than rhino hide. And the footwear is trending mainstream as you read this, at e-tailers like Maasai Treads and Akala Sandals and soleRebels, whose $80 "tooTOOs" womens shoes, which feature outsoles made of hand-cut discarded tire treads, are pictured above.

Then there is Detroit Threads, where the Reverend Faith Fowler ripped a page from the thousand-miler pagebook. At Cass Community Social Services in Detroit, she employs dozens of workers who turn old tires – the group’s Green Industries division collects about 35,000 discards a year – into $25 flip-flops with some serious tread life. Aimed at urban hipsters who are tired of the same old look, the sandals are designed by students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

In Mumbai, India, ground-floor entrepreneur Anu Tandon Vieira established The Retyrement Plan, where workers morph old tires and other recycled waste materials into weatherproof outdoor furniture that will inflate the ambience of any patio or three-season room.

On a whole other plane, a Swedish company, Apokalyps Labotek, is making durable and stylish flooring out of the 4m tires discarded nationally there each year. The company grinds the tires into a powder and through some sort of modern alchemy, mixes it with recycled plastic and – voilà! – creates parquet flooring as tough as a thousand-miler sandal. Tread lightly? No way.

Now, it’s true that Bridgestone and other tire companies are trying to develop an airless, recyclable tire that would end the disposal dilemma posed by rubber tires, which are tougher to get rid of than a Volkswagen Beetle. But rest easy – there’s no need to rush out and stock up on akalas. It’s estimated that billions of old car tires remain stockpiled around the world, so this is one recyclable resource that’s not disappearing any time soon.

Kenyans commonly refer to akala sandals as "thousand-milers". (Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images)

Kenyans commonly refer to akala sandals as "thousand-milers". (Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images)

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

From e-tailer soleRebels, the $80 "tooTOOs" shoe. (soleRebels.com)

Summary: Each year, some 1.5b car and truck tires are discarded globally. Now, this cumbersome waste product is getting a stylish second life.


Krista D'Agostino and James Costello

08/27/2014 AT 05:25 PM EDT

The worst thing to ever happen to James Costello was also the best.

The Boston Marathon bombing survivor – who was famously photographed in the wake of

, burned and with his clothes hanging in tatters – has married Krista D'Agostino, the

The couple celebrated their union on Saturday at the Hyatt Regency in Boston, where they "danced the night away," Emily Sharp, a rep for the hotel, told the

âIt was an elegant, Nantucket type of theme, which is one of the couple's favorite places, a nod to their cherished memories together, a real fairytale vision,â Sharp added. "It was just so much fun."

Wedding planner Rachael Gross told

that the pair, who chose John Legend's "All of Me" as the song for their first dance, went for a nautical theme, "but without the literal nautical elements."

"It was such a true representation of their character, their style and their love," shared Gross. "Everyone was soaring, soaring."

Sam Adams Brewery donated a special "Brewlywed Ale" to the event, which included about 150 guests.

, also 31, eight months after meeting her at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, where he was transferred after undergoing multiple surgeries at Massachusetts General Hospital following the attack.

"April 15 was one of the worst days of my life. I soon wondered why and for what reason this has happened," he wrote in a Facebook post in December. "I now realize why I was involved in the tragedy. It was to meet my best friend, and the love of my life."

Summary: James Costello wed nurse Krista D'Agostino at the Hyatt Regency in Boston on Aug. 23


If Jeff Wall sees something extraordinary - men running through the suburbs with rifles, a family being violently evicted from their home - he doesn't stop and take a photograph. He goes back to his studio and sets about recreating the moment, or what this precise Canadian, a part-time academic, would call the "experience of the moment". He casts the protagonists, using amateur rather than professional actors, builds minutely detailed sets, and rehearses the action until he gets it right - then he takes the picture. Sometimes this process will take a month; sometimes it will take more than a year.

Wall's picture After 'Invisible Man' By Ralph Ellison, an image of a man in a basement hung with 1,369 lightbulbs, inspired by Ellison's novel about a black outsider, took many months and a lot of broken bulbs to complete. "Writers have it very easy," Wall says. "They have the pleasure of imagining these scenes. Working on that picture, I really learned about what Ellison's 1,369 lightbulbs means. You can only have a few on at a time. I got to know that room as well as the Invisible Man would have, had he existed."

So Wall's production values are extremely high, and to this extent he works more like a film director or a Renaissance studio painter than a photographer. Spontaneity itself, Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment", does not interest him - only the illusion or recreation of it. Perhaps his best-known work, A Sudden Gust Of Wind (After Hokusai), based on one of Katsushika Hokusai's 19th-century woodcuts of Mount Fiji, has the immediacy and high drama of a film still - the bare trees bending in the wind, the people crouched and hanging on to their hats - but is, in fact, a composite of more than 100 photographs, taken over two consecutive winters at a cranberry farm. "When I began working on the computer," he says, "I realised you don't have to do it all at once. Of course it's exciting trying to get everything in one shot, but working digitally slowed things down. It made the process more complicated and, I hope, deeper."

Wall, who is 59, has lived in Vancouver, Canada, for most of his life. He was part of the city's avant garde art scene in the late 60s, and until recently was a lecturer in fine art at the University of British Columbia, near where he lives with his English wife and their three children. Growing up, Wall thought he wanted to be a painter, and spent weekends working on Jackson Pollock-inspired canvases in his parents' garden shed. In his early 20s, he moved on to what he now dismisses as "very tentative, very interim conceptual art", but then got stuck and came to London to study history of art at the Courtauld Institute. There, he fell in love with 19th-century painters such as Manet, Degas and Géricault - and somewhat out of love with the abstract expressionist experiments of the time. Suddenly, the counterculture just didn't look as good, as rich, as the culture. "It's not that I think what happened in the 60s and 70s was unimportant," he says. "I just became convinced that I didn't want to do alternatives to traditional art - I wanted to do traditional art, make big pictures. If you look at Velásquez and Cézanne and think, those two are more important to me than Warhol or Joseph Beuys, then you have to act on it. And I knew I wanted to be involved in pictorial art, my first affection and enthusiasm."

Between 1971 and 1977, Wall produced no work, but "I wasn't doing nothing. I was looking hard at photography, which I started to do in London, and at painting and cinema - not just going to the movies, but really thinking about it." He was inspired by the European art house cinema of the 60s - Godard, Bergman, Antonioni, Fassbinder: "I admire that type of artistry where one person can write and direct, and then someone else gives it its distinctive look. I don't think there's as significant a group of film-makers today as there was in 1963 - that kind of authorship just isn't present."

Wall returned to Canada and began producing work again. In 1979 he had his first solo show, the centrepiece of which was a photograph of a vandalised room based on Delacroix's The Death Of Sardanapalus; Wall remembers that the picture "was done in a hurry - it was full of the energy I had backed up from the 70s." But more than the subject matter, it was Wall's use of a new medium that had the biggest impact: he exhibited the picture as a transparency on a giant lightbox, so that from a distance it looked like a billboard or brilliantly lit theatre set. Close up, every last detail was vivid, almost three-dimensional. Here was photography you could turn on and off, and which had the instant appeal of film or television and advertising - radiant, backlit, hyper-real. "When I discovered the transparency, it seemed viable like nothing else," Wall says. "And the response was enthusiastic, at least from a small number of people, right from the beginning. I haven't really had to struggle. I suppose that's a good thing, but I'm not sure."

Wall has worked with his transparencies ever since, taking advantage of whatever new technology comes along to produce increasingly perfect pictures - a process he calls cinematography. (You could say he has introduced struggle to what might have been an easy, too-accessible artform.) He has used his brilliant, perfecting medium to look at imperfect, marginal places and people - an insomniac waking from a nightmare on a dingy kitchen floor, a man with a bloody nose laughing on the street. Wall has a sense of humour, but it's a fairly dark one: his Vampires' Picnic, a kitsch bloodbath with blankets, was conceived in part as a comment on the cannibalism of celebrity culture.

To start with, in the 80s, Wall thought his pictures should be about something. His 1982 picture Mimic, for instance, which looks like amazingly lucky street photography but was performed by actors in front of lights and a large-format camera, was "about" racism. To a modern audience, it might look as if the bearded man is on the phone, but in fact he is stretching the skin under his eyes and sneering or saying something to an Asian stranger, while his girlfriend squints in unconscious mimicry out of the frame. Today, though, Wall wants his pictures to be purely aesthetic experiences. "Twenty-five years ago I thought subject matter had some significance in itself," he says. "Mimic was about racism in some way, about hostile gestures between races, but I'm glad the picture itself is good and it doesn't need that to be successful. Now I try to eliminate any additional subject matter - those things are for other people, they're not my problem."

This is the great, and frustrating, contradiction in Wall's work: so many of his pictures are bursting with drama and suppressed narrative, yet he does not want to get caught up in this reductive business of what-it-all-means. Every picture does not tell a story; the camera is more interesting when it lies. At Wall's solo show at the Whitechapel in 1996, the first image you saw was his vast 4m x 2m battlescape Dead Troops Talk, in which Russian corpses smile and scream and stagger over a stony bomb crater, their insides hanging out. The title gave a date and location, near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986, but Wall says it is not about that conflict, or even about war. He started instead with an idea for a picture about dead people coming back to life and having a conversation: "They needed to have something to talk about, so I picked soldiers because they're connected to a cause they may not comprehend or agree with. But it didn't matter which soldiers or which war - I could have had my pick."

As well as his large-scale transparencies, Wall likes to work on more intimate, documentary photography, which uses no digital effects, no crew, and far less time. "Up to 15 years ago, most of my pictures were views and landscapes of the city. Then I just moved in a little bit closer, taking pictures of a little sink in the cellar of my studio, and I learned a lot. I can go back and forth between the cinematography and the documentary material; they're two sides of the same coin. A picture like Peas And Sauce takes me 10 minutes to make, but it's not major or minor, it's not this or that, they're both equal in my mind."

It's a flexibility that gives him huge range as an artist - his work encompasses the heroic and the banal, the kitsch and the lyrical, the epic and the miniature. He tries to keep the two kinds of work separate, and labels his pictures as one or the other - but sometimes even a purist has to cheat. His lovely, lambent Dawn was shot under documentary conditions on a Vancouver street corner, but the street lights went off a minute before the colour in the sky was perfect, so Wall ended up blending two pictures. "Admittedly there's a slight alteration to the truth," he says, "but it's a very minor adjustment. It's within the terrain of documentary photography: if I added a person, it might not be."

There's a fine line between fact and fiction, between a moment and a perfect representation of that moment; Jeff Wall's best work comes from never having to choose.

· Jeff Wall is at Tate Modern, London, from October 21-January 8 2006

Summary: Since the 1970s, Canadian photographer Jeff Wall has worked as if he's a cinematographer, using a cast and crew to create large-scale, dramatic images that can take more than a year to get right. But he also likes to take intimate, documentary shots. He tells Melissa Denes why they are two sides of the same coin.


Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour

V&A, London SW7, until 17 Dec

Although photography writes with light, it has always flirted with darkness, both excited and alarmed by the erasure of its luminous inscriptions. Some photographers are sun-worshippers: Edward Weston delighted in the searing glare of Mexico, and Man Ray preached the arrival of an 'age of light', with solarised bodies as 'oxidised residues', irradiated by photo-chemistry. Other photographers prefer the inky, inscrutable night. Bill Brandt photographed the gloom of London during the Blitz, and Brassai spied on the nocturnal perversities of Paris. They all practice a Manichean art, which captures light and seals it inside the camera's blackened chamber. Hence the appeal of dusk, which is the subject of the V&A's subtle, exquisite new exhibition: 'Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour'.

Twilight prevaricates unsteadily between day and night; the encroachment of shadows provokes a mortal panic, but the objects that are being expunged often seem to emit a brief, dying glow. Here, on the border between two worlds, the dual allegiances of photographers pull them in opposite directions. Do they lament the loss of the sun, or worship the lunatic goddess described by Weston as 'Lady Moon'? At the V&A, we are enticed into a twilight zone, eased through a rite of passage that leads from diurnal work to nocturnal pleasure, or from alert consciousness to phantasmagoric sleep. The French call twilight 'the blue hour', so the curtained walls have the dim, sedative tint of a soothing cocktail bar; a laminated white floor suggests the lunar surface.

Each of the eight photographers on display is given a private annexe, painted dark lilac or lush velvety purple. These are their personal dark rooms, alchemical dens (as the curator Martin Barnes beautifully puts it) in which they work their transforming miracles. Sometimes the space is like a bedroom, housing the elaborate hallucinatory tableaux arranged by Gregory Crewdson. For Philip-Lorca diCorcia, it is closer to an all-night diner, a blearily bright hang-out for nighthawks. In the case of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, the cramped cubicle is a cell, on whose walls are pinned fugitive glimpses of social disintegration and despair in the streets of Kharkov. Mikhailov's version of the bedroom is a foul, filthy dormitory in a derelict barracks, with stained and pitted mattresses on a row of metal beds; the frost-bitten blue tone of his prints is a symptom of poverty, as miserable as the atmosphere of Picasso's 'blue period'.

DiCorcia, whose subjects are adolescent hustlers on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, interprets twilight as a lapse into indulgence and satiety, the time when fantasy is set free. Mikhailov, however, translates twilight into Wagnerian German by calling his series Die Dammerung. Wagner described the twilight of the gods, who grow old and decline into obsolescence as the shadows thicken around them. In prints that are pinned so low on the walls that you have to crouch near the floor to see them, Mikhailov looks up from puddled gutters and documents the collapse of protective walls and the subsidence of the sky itself. Chrystel Lebas, who photographs trees and shrubs that merge and coagulate at dusk, discovers an even more atavistic meaning in the time of day. Her series is entitled Abyss: this, according to Greek cosmology, was the gulf of indiscriminate non-being which painfully gave birth to our lighted, differentiated world. When the sun withdraws, the clogged forests of Lebas recreate that oblivious condition.

The pictorialist photographer Edward Steichen remarked in 1899 that twilight was 'a beautiful hour', when things 'melt into each other'. For Lebas, whose trees condense into an impenetrable palisade as we watch, the loss of distinctness is a kind of death, not a pleasurable deliquescence. This, as Ori Gersht demonstrates in a short film made for the exhibition, is the way the world will end, in a reversion to its beginning. In Gersht's Big Bang, a siren ululates and causes a vase of freeze-dried flowers to shudder and tremble; the glass splinters, the flowers fly apart, and pyrotechnics flare up to announce the expiry of the sun, engulfed all over again by the primal murk.

Elsewhere a valiant battle goes on between darkness and light. Crewdson photographs an extra-terrestrial beam that slices through the sky and alights on a drab American suburb: the eye of God, terrifyingly capricious, chooses to focus on this nondescript patch of ground, which becomes the stage for a close encounter between heaven and earth. In Liang Yue's photographs of Beijing, a young man with a torch gropes through a city obscured by fumes and by the storms of grit blown in from the Mongolian desert. The light here is that of the perplexed individual mind, straining to peer into a dubious future, while for American master Robert Adams the evening star, in Blake's words, is a 'bright torch of love', sanctifying whatever it shines on. The Australian photographer Bill Henson sees twilight as a camouflage for shadier assignations. In the darkness of Henson's massive prints, light leaves confidential traces like the slick track of a snail: it shines on a beer bottle that is humid with cold, it glistens on clammy flesh, and it picks out a tear in the corner of a noctambulant character's eye. The same reflected gleam on the trunk of a eucalypt turns a tree into a gesticulating ghost.

The show justifies Barnes's alchemical metaphor - except that, while alchemists conspired to manufacture gold, photographers prefer to create silver, as Robert Adams does when he shows how moonlight transfigures a scrappy clump of weeds. But once at least the setting sun genuinely gilds squalid reality. DiCorcia's Texan rent-boy stares through a pane of grubby glass at the cheap pleasures he will buy for himself if he turns a trick: a greasy hamburger wrapped in a napkin, coffee in a plastic cup with the Parthenon imprinted on it, a dented jukebox storing the hits of a defunct decade. He remains excluded, locked out in the street with its noisy battery of jabbering signs. Behind him, however, the sun performs dazzling polychrome tricks as it sinks into the Pacific. It bleaches the sky above the smoggy city, and it burnishes the boy's unkempt hair until he seems, like an angel stranded on the sidewalk, to be wearing a halo. The magic hour is a time of transition, and sometimes of transcendence.

Summary: Photography: Haunting shadowy images chase the fading light in the V&A's exquisite new show, says Peter Conrad.


Officer Ben Hall with Alexis DeLorenzo and her daughter

10/09/2014 AT 09:30 AM EDT

A Michigan officer who pulled over a vehicle because a 5-year-old girl wasn't secured in a booster seat decided a ticket wouldn't cut it.

Instead, Emmett Township public safety officer Ben Hall bought her a seat.

"A ticket doesn't solve the situation," Hall told

. "What solves it is the child being in the booster seat like she should be. It was the easiest 50 bucks I ever spent."

Hall was on patrol Friday in the southern Michigan community when he pulled over the vehicle after someone reported that it had an unsecured young child inside. Alexis DeLorenzo and her daughter were riding with a friend, and Hall said DeLorenzo told him that she had fallen on hard times and couldn't afford a booster seat.

"I was in a spot where I could help her," Hall said.

DeLorenzo said she knew that they could have been ticketed, but instead, Hall told her to meet him at a Wal-Mart, where he bought her the seat.

"It changed my life," DeLorenzo said. "I'm never going to forget him. And neither will my daughter."

Summary: "It was the easiest 50 bucks I ever spent," said officer Ben Hall


FORTUNE — So much for having your own little corner at work. For two decades, companies have been shifting to open workspace designs and eliminating dedicated offices in a twin effort to reduce real estate costs and encourage collaboration between colleagues. But as the per-person square footage of the typical workplace continues to shrink, many workers — and managers — are beginning to wonder whether we’ve reached the limit.

“In open workspaces, it’s hard for people to get their work done if it requires uninterrupted concentration and focus,” says Cali Williams Yost, a flexible workplace strategist and author of Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day. “People who have jobs that require private conversations or uninterrupted thinking really struggle.”

A majority of employers allocate 150 square feet or less per worker, down dramatically from 225 square feet in 2010, according to a recent survey by CoreNet Global, a professional association for corporate real estate managers. Space per person is likely to continue to shrink, with 58% of companies expecting to increase employment in the next year. A whopping 81% of companies surveyed have already adopted an open-space floor plan.

MORE: Maybe Apple’s Tim Cook knows what he’s doing after all

Assigned space is unused 50% of the time, says Richard Kadzis, CoreNet’s vice president for strategic communications. And cutting out that space can benefit a company’s balance sheet.

AT&T T eliminated offices and consolidated workspace with savings of $3,000 per office for a total of $550 million per year, according to a General Services Administration report. Nortel’s NTL telecommuting program saves $20 million a year in real estate, the equivalent of two 20-story office buildings with 40,000 square feet per floor.

But creating a decent workspace isn’t as simple as tearing out office doors and putting in long rows of benches where employees can connect laptops, or putting in place a hoteling system for people to reserve space on an as-needed basis. Done right, an open floor-plan office will include strategically placed quiet rooms for “heads down” work, huddle rooms for small meetings or impromptu discussions, larger conference rooms, and social areas where all that collaboration and innovation can take place. There should also be access to plants and natural light, whether through windows, skylights or creative use of atriums.

Noise is often the most ignored factor in open design, says Kadzis. Acoustical engineers can do remarkable things with white noise and noise-absorbing materials, but they must be part of the design team. That group should also include executives from technology, environmental sustainability, human resources, and facilities management.

When editor Susan R. Paisner worked for a Washington, D.C. trade association, only 10 directors had dedicated offices, and the remaining 80 staffers shared one big open space divided into cubicles. “It was difficult for me because I was frequently being told to be quieter,” Paisner recalls. “It was a very frustrating, difficult environment to work in.”

There were a few small conference rooms in the office, but they were often booked. Once, a challenging issue arose, and she wanted to immediately sit down and speak privately with her staff, but they had to check every private space on the floor before finding one that was available.

MORE: From Hooters Girl to the corner office

Employers also need to integrate telecommuting and flexible work programs when they open these new workspaces, so managers and employees can match the type of work that needs to happen with the spaces and times that are available. For instance, someone who needs to concentrate on a large project should be able to shift her hours to come in before the office is noisy or work from home until she’s met her deadline, Yost says. And employees need training to learn to manage where, when, and how they should work.

For anyone thinking that the challenges are greater than the benefits of open workspaces, you’ve got plenty of company. Even some real estate professionals believe that companies are over-building collaborative space at the expense of privacy and focus work — 31% agreed with that statement in CoreNet’s survey. But the cost savings are quite powerful.

“Open workspaces are not going away,” predicts Yost. “Companies are going to take this as far as they can to save the overhead.”

Summary: As the per-person square footage in offices continues to shrink, many workers -- and managers -- are beginning to wonder whether we've reached the limit.


Unilever hadn’t grown significantly in years when the board brought in Paul Polman from Nestlé as CEO in 2009. Despite the recession, he sparked rapid growth and record profits, focusing especially on emerging markets, where the company has found opportunity selling its household products in tiny quantities at prices of 10¢ to 15¢. Of its 400-plus brands, those with annual revenues over 1 billion euros include Dove, Lipton, Lux, and Hellmann’s (recently embroiled in a tempest in a jar over the exact meaning of “mayo”; see Fortune.com). Polman, 58, has attracted wide praise for putting environmental and social goals prominently at the center of Unilever’s strategy—and making it pay. He talked recently with Fortune about audacious goals, attracting young employees, and more:

We’re seeing signs of a global economic slowdown. You have two billion customers around the world. What are they telling you? There are some forces coming together that we’re all struggling with. Clearly, the money that we’ve pumped in since the 2008 – 2009 crisis has not given us the growth. If anything, it has made a few people richer but with a lot of people excluded. You see that in the U.S., and you see it in Europe. Markets are stable or down, if you look at the broad consumer market. And then the developing markets have seen a significant slowdown over the last year or two.

And so we see a global economy that used to grow at 4% or 5% levels, and it probably is now growing at 2% or 3% levels. The latest forecast from the IMF and OECD is 3.1%. And any forecast is coming down. So we have to be realistic now.

And that forecast is your expectation, too, I gather. We’ve always warned for that, and often have been called pessimists, but it’s better to be a realist, and that’s what we’re trying to be.

It’s almost five years now since you announced a goal of doubling the size of the company while reducing its environmental footprint. Is that still looking feasible? It was indeed an audacious goal, but I always believed it was more of a mindset issue. One of our goals is sustainably sourcing all our agricultural materials. We were at 10% and were seen as one of the more forward-looking companies, always No. 1 in the Dow Jones sustainability index. Now we’re at 50%. It took us 150 years to get to 10% and four years to get to four times higher. If you set these audacious goals, you get people out of a comfort zone, that makes them do amazing things.

That goal caused quite a stir inside and outside the company when you announced it. What have you learned since then about the effects of doing something that big? If you set more audacious goals, and you get people out of their comfort zone, the first thing you have to realize is that people are actually capable of doing more than we all thought possible. We’ve all learned a lot. Also that you can run a business and make a positive contribution to society. There doesn’t need to be a tradeoff. I think the crisis in 2008 – 2009 has made many people realize that the economic progress that we had seen has been tremendous, has lifted many people out of poverty, but has also come at an enormous price — enormous levels of government and private debt, enormous levels of overconsumption, and frankly, leaving too many people behind.

In this increasingly connected world, you see more and more people able to aggregate their forces and make their displeasure known. That’s one of the reasons why we have significantly more geopolitical conflicts now. Businesses are under the same scrutiny as governments, and so if you want to be successful in tomorrow’s world, you have to reach a higher level of trust, which requires more transparency. You have to make positive contributions to issues like climate change, food security, and unemployment.

The U.N. Foundation just gave you its Champion for Global Change Award. Can the U.N. be helpful in reaching some of these goals? The U.N. is increasingly important. Obviously, the tragic Ebola crisis is one of the examples where people from the U.N. are doing heroic work. But what you basically see is that the political system which we created to rule the world dates back to Bretton Woods, and it’s not really functioning anymore as well as it should. One of the reasons you see these geopolitical conflicts is because many politicians have a hard time internalizing these global challenges to their own constituents, and the U.N. is playing an enormous role there to keep a global moral framework that we can all at least aspire to. The U.N. put out the original millennium development goals, which had as a simple objective to halve the number of people living in poverty, which at that time was defined as $7.25 a day or less, and we’ve actually achieved that goal over the last 15 years. And one of the reasons we’ve achieved that is because of this moral framework that the U.N. put out that has served as a beacon for many governments, companies, and other institutions.

Now there are opportunities to make the U.N. work better, and that is why we as companies via the U.N. Global Compact and other institutions try to be part of that. It doesn’t serve anything to criticize if you don’t want to be part of the solution.

You’ve said you’re simplifying Unilever. How do you simplify a company that’s in 190 countries? You do it with good people. People are driven by an enormous level of energy if the purpose is high. People really want to make a bigger difference to life than just growing market share or improving profits. We’re showing that you can do that while at the same time satisfying your shareholders. For example, Lifebuoy is one of our hand-washing soaps. It’s growing at double digits because it really is helping children [in emerging markets] reach the age of 5, through the simple act of hand washing. That unleashes enormous energy.

If you bring these strong purposes to your brands, it actually makes the brands more relevant, because what you have to watch in a big company like this is that you don’t fall in love with yourself and become too internally focused. If you can move that purpose outside of the company, outside of your own interests, and put the interests of society first, which actually should be the purpose of any company, then I think you unlock that energy.

You’re investing more in leadership development and have opened a new center in Singapore aimed at that goal. What’s the larger human capital strategy? My job really is not really to hit the numbers every quarter and be a hero, because that’s actually easy to do. My job is to be sure that this company is even stronger than what I inherited and can last for many hundreds of years more. One of the most important things is to invest in human capital. So one of the key things I look at is, Are we a desired employer or not? That’s very important to me. On LinkedIn we’ve become the third-most-looked-up company after Google and Apple, which is actually quite amazing because Unilever is not really a brand in itself. The company is very much in demand, especially among young people.

When you came to the company, you were an outsider CEO who changed the strategy. What did you learn about how to make changes of that magnitude in a global enterprise? Probably anybody in my position would have made the same changes, because a lot of things in the world were changing that our predecessors did not have to deal with. The growth of the East, the enormous speed of the digitization of society. Because of economic growth, the pressures on the planetary boundaries — these are all factors coming together in these past 10 or 15 years and putting pressure on businesses and requiring businesses to change. Are we the ones that have that ultimate wisdom to do that better than anybody else? I don’t think so.

And my job really has been to, first of all, understand the values that make this company work and be successful over the last 150 years. Having come in as an outsider, I spent enormous amounts of time understanding what works in this company. It has always been a company that is driven by doing good, from its early days under Lord Lever. Throughout its history, you see that.

We’ve just been able to capture it and link it to our business growth. My job is probably the simplest in the company, believe it or not, because it’s really focused on trying to make everybody else successful. And then you see what this enormous energy is that you can unleash.

The strategy changes are probably the least important changes. It’s just bringing this company back to the core of what made it successful in the first place.

This story is from the December 22, 2014 issue of Fortune.

Summary: Unilever chief Paul Polman tells how his "audacious" goal is re-energizing a giant 150-year-old company.


With Apple’s earnings due next week, the two groups of analysts are miles apart

The amateur analysts who follow Apple AAPL tend to be considerably more bullish than the professionals who do it for banks and brokerage houses. After all, unlike the sell-side analysts who are telling investors to buy the stock, they don’t have clients who will be angry and disappointed if the company doesn’t exceed expectations.

But with Apple set to report its fiscal first-quarter earnings Tuesday, the gap between bloggers and pros is as wide as we can remember.

Among the 44 analysts we polled in advance of Tuesday’s Q1 2011 earnings call — 10 amateurs and 34 professionals — the difference in their consensus revenues, $26.4 billion and $24.31 billion, respectively, was nearly $2.1 billion (8.6%). In percentage terms, the gap between their EPS estimates — nearly $1 — was even larger: a whopping 18%.

The prize for most bullish estimate goes to Dennis Hildebrand of Apple’s Gold, an amateur with a mixed track record who is predicting earnings of $6.61 on revenues of $27.8 billion.

The most conservative estimate comes, ironically, from Needham’s Charlie Wolf, a long-time Apple bull. Wolf, who’s calling for earnings of $4.93 on revenues of $23.01 billion, tends to come in on the low side. He explained in a private e-mail that he rarely changes the numbers he files immediately after each quarterly earnings report, and he bases his calculations on Apple’s (invariably conservative) gross margin guidance.

Below: The revenue, EPS and gross margin numbers we’ve gathered so far (amateurs in blue, pros in peach). The Deagol rating in the sixth column is a measure of each analyst’s accuracy over the past two or three quarters, with 1 the highest and 40 the lowest. (See here for an explanation for how it was derived.)

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Summary: With Apple's earnings due next week, the two groups of analysts are miles apart The amateur analysts who follow Apple tend to be considerably more bullish than the professionals who do it for banks and brokerage houses. After all, unlike the sell-side analysts who are telling investors to buy the stock, they don't have clients…


The girls sit around the studio, posing and smoking. They stand to be painted, in big hats or holding fans. Kirchner paints them lipsticked, alluring, dismissive, naked. He curdles them in palette-knifings and clotted brushstrokes and a sour fauve colour. He paints them fast, and draws them even faster. He even draws himself, naked and dancing, on a postcard, in a sort of delirium. He draws couples having sex, a woman crouching naked as though to piss, smiling over her shoulder. He runs through styles and poses. Looking at Kirchner, you think of the artists he has looked at (Cranach, Van Gogh, Grünewald, Dürer, Gauguin, Matisse) and the artists who have looked at him (Francis Bacon, Georg Bazelitz). In art, there are always these cycles of influence. Studios are filled with the ghosts of the past and premonitions of the future.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a founder, in 1905, of Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group that also included Schmidt-Rotluff, Heckel and, later, Emil Nolde. This Royal Academy exhibition, Kirchner: Expressionism and the City, is as good an introduction to the artist as we are likely to see. Covering the Dresden period of Die Brücke and Kirchner's subsequent years, up to 1918, in Berlin, it brings together some tremendous paintings, a small selection of sculptures and many prints and drawings, as well as a number of informative, slightly alarming photographs taken in Kirchner's studio.

On my way to the show I met an Academician. "How is the Kirchner?" I asked. "Quite nice," she replied. Kirchner - the absinthe-addled expressionist, a man who drew himself in the grip of a morphine fit; who, feigning madness to get himself out of the German army in the first world war, suffered a breakdown and spent months shuttling from sanatorium to sanatorium - quite nice? By 1918 Kirchner was a physical and nervous wreck, a burned-out case who had to put himself back together again (but, perhaps, never quite did). The National Socialists went on to brand him a degenerate, and there are still Brits who condemn him to a polite mediocrity. Little wonder he eventually shot himself, in 1938.

Perhaps people mistake Kirchner's bright colour for brightness of temperament. Or his rapid, cursive drawing, with its scribbly paroxysms and flourishes, for a quickness and lightness of mind as well as eye. Or those juddering angularities, the anatomical twists and perspectival distortions in his paintings, for a kind of energised mental vim and bounce. The high-heeled nudes in the studio, the dancers and circus acrobats, the pensive girls who seem so aware of being looked at - they might all be taken as celebrations of sexually liberated, attractively louche and laid-back bohemian life. But there is something forced and desperate there, too. The frolicking in the wavesmay evoke some kind of misapprehended "primitive" idyll (and take us back as much to Cézanne's Bathers as to Gauguin on Tahiti), but there is something awry with the whole idea. There always was.

Some of the claims made on his behalf - that, for example, his greatest achievements were his woodcut prints, or that he was better than the fauves (like Matisse) because he was less decorative - I find difficult to take seriously. One essay in the catalogue, by Louis de Marsalle, is full of praise for Kirchner's drawings and graphic pieces: they are "possibly the purest and loveliest of his works. They are without conscious design and intent; they mirror the sensations of a man of our time". Discovering that De Marsalle was a pseudonym for Kirchner himself makes us wonder about the man.

According to Picasso's biographer, John Richardson, Kirchner falsified the dates on certain of his paintings to prove that it was the painters of Die Brücke - and not Picasso, Matisse or the fauves - who first "discovered" African tribal art and what was unhappily termed "primitivism". Kirchner wasn't the only artist to redate paintings for the sake of his own eminence (Arshile Gorky did, too), and though you might question what exactly was going on in Dresden in the 20th century's first decade, Kirchner's action doesn't change his paintings. They are what they are.

Matisse's influence on Kirchner is unavoidable. There is a little drawing in the show called Milli Telling a Story, which is Matissean but somehow more wonky, less facile, than Matisse. This kind of thing endears me to Kirchner: when things seem to go wrong, they are wrong in the right way; they are individual and memorable. And his quotes - moments from a Gauguin, or a memory of Munch's famous painting Puberty, or a subject and a pose lifted from Lucas Cranach - become in Kirchner his own. They may be raw, but they are digested and assimilated rather than borrowed wholesale.

Kirchner's troubles are the stuff of cliche: the artist as tragic and self-destructive hero, the artist as outsider, or as tortured genius. But the work itself is not cliched. The Artillery-men in the Shower (1915), that self-conscious, crude group under the jets, barked at by a uniformed officer, is a scary essay in the de-individualised group. His Berlin street scenes - with their hookers and flneurs, the emptiness of the crossing at Innsbruck Street, the green-tinged light and the trams on Nollendorf Square - make the viewer feel as vulnerable and inconsequential as the naked young men in that shower. These are terribly affecting paintings.

Nevertheless, I don't think Kirchner is quite the protean force - painter, printmaker, sculptor, generative artist - that he is made out to be by his champions. A troubled artist and a troubling man, he remains difficult for us. The Royal Academy show spares us what is seen as his decline: his years in Switzerland; his gathering reputation coupled with his own unhappy revisions and eventual dismissal of his early work; his confused retreat. He shot himself while vacillating over his forthcoming marriage, his will, we are told, having deserted him. We might also have trouble with some of his subject matter, and what his art says about the mores of his age.

But Kirchner could not have done a thing about that. As he told us, via De Marsalle, he was a man of his own time. Perhaps we shall be looked back on with just as much resistance, with as little or as much sympathy as is our due.

· Kirchner: Expressionism and the City is at the Royal Academy, London W1, until September 21. Details: 0870 848 8484.

Summary: Kirchner's bright colours and dancing girls seem like celebrations of bohemian life. But desperation is never far beneath the surface, says Adrian Searle.


The founders of Boston’s Third Rock Ventures turned heads in the venture capital world when they managed to launch three of their small life sciences businesses onto the public stock market over just three months in 2013.

The success of the popular initial public offerings — for bluebird bio Inc., Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Foundation Medicine Inc. — are only part of the story. Business developments at those companies since they went public and the surging value of all three stocks are startling.

The three companies now have a combined stock market value of more than $8 billion, their shares outpacing other life sciences stocks by a great deal.

Shares of Agios, which focuses on cancer therapies, have soared 528 percent since going public. The company’s IPO raised $120 million, but the popularity of its stock allowed Agios to collect $350 million more in two secondary offerings last year.

Bluebird’s stock has spiked by 439 percent since its IPO, and it had two additional stock offerings that raised $376 million. The company is focusing on gene therapies for a variety of diseases.

Foundation Medicine’s stock is up 160 percent since the cancer diagnostics company’s IPO. It struck a deal last month to sell a little more than half of the company for over $1 billion to the drug giant Roche Holding AG.

More on all three companies in a minute. The story of the venture firm that helped them grow is just as interesting.

The founders of Third Rock aren’t exactly old hands at the venture business. Kevin Starr, Robert Tepper, and Mark Levin, all former executives of Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., were hanging out in 2006 at a Las Vegas casino, of all places, when they decided to go into venture capital. They formed Third Rock the next year.

“We’re more serial company start-up people than we are investors,” said Starr. The founders had spent their careers “building companies or working at the bench,” he said.

They saw a confluence of life sciences business trends creating a remarkable opportunity in venture capital at the time.

As Starr tells it, big drug companies were preoccupied with their equally big business problems and ignoring early-stage life sciences companies as investment opportunities. Money for those companies was hard to come by.

“We were in the middle of a lost decade for scientific innovation,” said Starr.

He meant the funding of new ideas. Actual life sciences innovation — in academic labs and medical centers — was exploding.

New technology in fields such as big data, next-generation tools, and robotics was making it possible for life sciences companies to advance ideas at dramatically faster speeds.

“When we walked around the halls of academia, we thought we were in the middle of the greatest innovation era of our lifetime,” Starr said.

Levin, Tepper, and Starr believed there would be a huge appetite for new drugs and other medical products.

The Third Rock founders also thought investors would reward companies that could demonstrate real progress — though even they would admit the stock prices of their star companies have outstripped Third Rock’s early expectations.

A few qualifiers are in order here. Third Rock is certainly not the only Massachusetts venture firm focused on plowing money into life sciences businesses today. And ground-shaking results are hardly a given. Third Rock has invested in 37 businesses since 2007.

But the outsized success of Third Rock’s IPO class of 2013 supports many of the ideas behind the firm’s process. Most important, they demonstrated how documented progress on the treatment of diseases will be rewarded in financial markets.

Agios has shown striking results in relatively small numbers of cancer patients so far.

The company’s treatment doesn’t destroy cancer cells; it reprograms them to become functional again. Some patients gained no benefit, but many showed improvement and even remission.

Bluebird has been targeting a rare children’s blood disorder as the first commercial application of its gene therapy.

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration gave the bluebird process a “breakthrough therapy” designation.

Foundation Medicine’s stock performance had not been particularly impressive until Roche, the world’s largest producer of cancer drugs, struck a deal in January to acquire a majority of the company.

The shares more than doubled immediately after that, based on the drug giant’s apparent confidence in Foundation Medicine’s technology.

Venture capital of all kinds is a risky business. Building a company around a medical therapy is an uphill battle.

But new technologies and tools really do make many more things possible. And the rewards speak for themselves.

Summary: Three Cambridge companies funded by Third Rock Ventures went public in a span of three months in 2013. The shares of bluebird bio Inc. Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Foundation Medicine Inc. have since gone through the roof.


02/11/2015 AT 09:30 AM EST

It's the new ABC family sitcom that

, about a Taiwanese immigrant family finding its way in '90s suburban Orlando, centers on the actions of young hip-hop loving preteen Eddie Huang (Hudson Yang). But this character is far from fiction.

, 32, is a former lawyer-turned-chef- author and, now, restaurateur who runs New York City's

. His 2013 memoir is the basis for the show, and he says that the colorful main character and those of the Huang family are plucked straight from his experiences.

"When I was younger, I was like, 'Man, we should be on TV, people should be hearing our stories,' " Huang tells PEOPLE during a break from hosting his Hennessy Privilège-sponsored Chinese New Year Celebration dinner in Manhattan on Monday.

As for his own story, "I wasn't always embraced by the Asian community," he says. Growing up in Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Huang says he grew up with an affinity for African-American culture. "I would go to Chinese school and they would make fun of me for 'acting black,' that's what they'd say."

He faced some tough critics at home, as well. "When you're an Asian kid growing up," he says, "your parents [strongly discipline] you. They grind you."

Still, that never stopped him from being himself. After college and ending a legal career, Huang tried his hand at standup comedy and, later inspired by his mother's cooking, became a chef and opened his own restaurant.

Now with success on all fronts, "I feel vindicated. I'm glad people like [the show] and that it's accepted by the Asian community. My dad called recently and was like 'I'm really proud of you, you're a good kid.' That was cool."

Remaining a hardcore hip-hop aficionado, Huang says, "I've never done anything to be accepted. So, to do things my own way, go rogue, and then be accepted for being myself is huge. I just hope others do the same."

airs Tuesdays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.

Summary: The new sitcom is based off of this young NYC restauranteurâs childhood


Caleb Mintz, Avieal Mintz, Meredith Berkman, Yael Mintz and Noa Mintz

updated 02/24/2015 AT 06:40 PM EST

•originally published 02/24/2015 AT 03:30 PM EST

Noa Mintz is 15 years old. She's got three younger siblings, and she grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York. That's about all that's standard in Mintz's life story.

Three years ago, she had the idea to start her own babysitting agency after finding flaws with the babysitters and nannies her parents used. She started matching her parents' friends with caregivers she found through her local SoulCycle class and college-prep websites, making more and more connections through word of mouth. She charged clients $100-$200 for each match.

boasts 25 full-time nannies and 50 babysitters. Mintz charges a standard 15 percent of a nanny's initial gross salary, which can range anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000. The

did the math on those numbers and suggested that Mintz is making around $375,000 in revenue, though she told the paper she doesn't draw a salary "for now."

Mintz hired a CEO in July: Allison Johnson, 26, who initially applied to be a nanny. Taking orders from Mintz, Johnson said, was "a little bit of a challenge at first," though she says of Mintz, "I really support women who do things for themselves and get their visions out there."

Mintz "was always trying to start these mini-companies," mom Meredith Berkman told

. But she's quick to point out that Nannies by Noa is "not a hobby for her. This isn't a lemonade stand."

Summary: Noa Mintz has been starting companies since she was in elementary school, according to her mother


For all the talk of shrinking global defense budgets and sequestration, the U.S. military’s three prime combat aircraft contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman—have enjoyed a good run of late, with each company’s stock currently bumping up against its 52-week high. But don’t expect the smooth sailing to last, says one prominent industry analyst.

A U.S. Air Force contract set to be awarded this summer is set to upend the status quo, likely leading to a major move by one of the top three contractors to acquire a piece of another, says Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at aerospace and defense consultancy Teal Group. In other words, if you only pay attention to one thing in the defense space this year, keep a watchful eye on the Pentagon’s Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) decision.

If you’ve never heard of the Air Force’s long range strike-bomber, that’s by design. The super-secretive program has been on the flying branch’s wish list for years, though details surrounding the aircraft and its potential design remain scarce even as the Pentagon wants to spend $100 billion dollars on it. The program will produce 80 to 100 aircraft (at roughly $550 million per copy), replacing the Air Force’s legacy fleet of B-52 and B-1 bombers with a stealthy, long-range, nuke-capable strike aircraft entering service around 2020.

A program so big and so central to the USAF’s core competencies will shape America’s military aerospace priorities for the next two decades at least. But its impact will become immediately apparent this summer when the Air Force decides whether Northrop Grumman NOC or a collaboration between Boeing and Lockheed Martin will ultimately build and maintain its LRS-B fleet, Aboulafia says. With no other major combat airframe contract on the horizon and work on existing contracts running out, the loser of the competition will have to gracefully exit the combat aircraft business or make a big move to stay relevant.

Lockheed Martin LMT , with the $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in its back pocket, can withstand the loss of the LRS-B contract. But between Northrop Grumman and Boeing BA something’s got to give, Aboulafia says. Northrop Grumman’s last prime aircraft contract was for the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which entered service more than a decade ago (only 21 of the aircraft were built). Boeing’s only existing combat jet assembly line will cease production in 2018 unless it finds a new buyer for its F-18 or F-15 fighter jets.

“The broader problem is that two of the three are running out of work,” Aboulafia tells Fortune. “There’s nothing wrong with Northrop Grumman or Boeing as companies, but Northrop Grumman hasn’t built a new military aircraft in many years, and Boeing’s legacy military aircraft will end production by the end of this decade. So this becomes make or break, basically.”

That could prompt some interesting movement in the defense aerospace sector before the year is out. The initiative—and the opportunity—really belong to Boeing in this case. If the Boeing-Lockheed team wins the LRS-B contract, Northrop Grumman could survive as-is, buoyed by its various strong technology units that produce everything from electronic warfare components to radars to unmanned reconnaissance drones. But with its days as a combat aircraft prime contractor behind it and no new contracts on the horizon, it would almost certainly sell off its aircraft unit, Aboulafia says, and Boeing would be the obvious and eager buyer.

In doing so, the company might also come under pressure to sell off other units, and Northrop Grumman could come out of the tumult looking like a very different company. “Investors might say ‘look, you’re not going to be a combat airframe prime again, you’re worth less than the sum of your parts,’” Aboulafia says.

If Northrop Grumman wins the LRS-B contract, the outcome might not be all that different. In an effort to keep its combat airframe business alive, the much larger Boeing could make a play for Northrop Grumman’s combat airframe business and the LRS-B contract along with it.

In any case, one of the Pentagon’s top three combat jet primes will most likely be out of the combat jet business, Aboulafia says. Implications for shareholders notwithstanding, such a merger or acquisition could create philosophical problems for the Pentagon, which has in recent years discouraged blockbuster mergers and acquisitions that reduce competition in the space.

Ash Carter, the new U.S. Secretary of Defense—and, notably, the former chief of technology acquisition at the Pentagon—has been both a supporter of the LRS-B program and vocally critical of mergers that reduce the Pentagon’s technological talent pool. In written answers to questions submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee prior to his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Carter said he would support policies that preserve competition in the defense industry, warning against “consolidations that eliminate competition or cause market distortions that are not in the department’s best interest.”

It’s tough to square those competing interests when the LRS-B contract is the only game in town. When the Air Force hands down its decision this summer, someone will undoubtedly be left holding the bag, Aboulafia says, and the Pentagon can’t will its contractors into keeping production lines and design shops open without providing paid work for them to do. That makes the LRS-B contract as impactful for the military aerospace industry as any Pentagon spending decision handed down in recent memory.

“There’s one big competition and that’s going to determine everything,” Aboulafia says. “That’s the market.”

Summary: If you only watch one thing in the defense sector this year, watch the U.S. Department of Defense's Long Range Strike Bomber competition.


04/10/2015 AT 12:10 AM EDT

was a very special guest on

on Thursday, and she kicked off her appearance by performing a fun version of her 1983 hit "Holiday."

The 56-year-old was joined by

and The Roots, who used classroom instruments as their accompaniment.

Wearing sunglasses, the singer delivered a classic performance, complete with a whistle and cowbell.

"How cool is Madonna?" Fallon said after the clip aired.

"I kind of sucked though," Madonna said later. "I forgot the words."

For the next segment, Madonna danced onto the stage wearing several gold chains and her gold grill for an interview with Fallon that included the

host remembering a pelvic-thrusting dance move she taught him.

"I just want to apologize to my children for having seen that," he said.

Summary: The singer was a guest on The Tonight Show on Thursday


Shell’s big bet on liquefied natural gas (LNG) is far from a sure thing.

It is LNG, not oil, that’s truly behind the European energy giant’s $70 billion acquisition of Britain’s BG Group, which was announced on Wednesday. Together, the two firms would control a significant amount of the world’s LNG supply, besting rival ExxonMobil by a considerable margin.

But while being bigger is usually better in the energy world, it may not pay off as well when it comes to the volatile and niche LNG marketplace.

LNG suppliers used to have the upper hand, but that advantage has degraded sharply over the last few years as demand growth has waned. Contract terms are now shorter and less lucrative for suppliers. To make matters worse, rising construction and maintenance costs have made LNG imports less appealing to many customers, all while continued tepid demand is causing supply to build up. This doesn’t bode well for the new king of LNG.

Prolonged weak oil prices usually leads to consolidation in the energy industry. Bigger and better capitalized firms tend to gobble up smaller and weaker ones at a price relative to where they believe oil prices will end up once the market recovers (whenever, or wherever, that may be). But Shell’s chief executive, Ben van Beurden, told reporters on Wednesday that his company’s decision to acquire rival BG Group was “not a bet on the oil price.” Instead, he insisted, the deal was centered on creating a stronger company in both oil and natural gas. The key word here is gas, more specifically, liquefied natural gas, or LNG, which is basically natural gas compressed and chilled into a liquid, allowing it to be transported by sea to destinations far away.

Shell has bet big on LNG over the years and believes in its growth potential. Countries such as Japan and Korea, which can’t receive natural gas via pipeline, depend on LNG for all their gas needs. Shell has major investments in Australia and the Middle East and owns and leases around 40 LNG tankers, including the Prelude liquefaction ship, which is the largest ship ever built.

BG Group has invested in LNG as well, with projects in Egypt, Trinidad, and Australia and a fleet of around 25 owned and leased LNG carriers. BG also has an agreement with Cheniere LNG to purchase 3.5 million tonnes per annum (“mtpa”) of LNG from the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Together, Shell and BG are expected to produce as much as 33 mtpa of LNG this year. That’s equivalent to around 14% of global LNG imports for 2014. ExxonMobil, the largest of the energy “supermajors,” is slated to produce 22 mtpa. By 2018, after new projects under construction get rolling, the Shell-BG combo will pump an impressive 45 mtpa of LNG, which is equivalent to around 19% of 2014 global LNG imports.

So, this deal seems pretty much centered on gaining and protecting market share. Shell wants to be the undisputed leader in LNG. But is that wise? While LNG can be an extremely profitable venture, it can also turn out to be a total money-sucking disaster. The LNG market has gone from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market over the years. This is only going to get worse as supply increases.

To be sure, Shell is no novice in this space. The company assisted in building the first LNG gasification terminal in Algeria in the 1960s, so it has been in the LNG business from the very beginning. But Shell’s experience may actually be a liability in this case. The LNG market today is very different than it was just a few years ago.

In the past, Shell and other LNG suppliers could force its customers to sign long-term agreements known as take-or-pay contracts. Under these deals, Shell’s clients, usually a Japanese or Korean utility, would agree to take a specified amount of LNG per month for a long time, usually 20 years, and agree to pay the market price to the supplier even if it didn’t necessarily want or need the gas that second. The price of LNG is dynamic and has usually moved with the price of oil, which is used for totally different applications. This became a major problem in the 2000s, as oil and natural gas prices diverged significantly. In some cases, LNG was being sold to customers, mostly in Asia, at a rate that was as much as six to 10 times what natural gas was being sold for in the United States.

Eventually, everyone wanted in on this racket, leading to an explosion of gasification projects all around the world, from Malaysia to Qatar to even Peru. As the supply of LNG has crept up over the years, the power of suppliers has waned. With LNG demand growth slowing in Asia, which soaks up 75% of LNG imports, the market has become less favorable to sellers.

In response, sellers are now demanding shorter commitments, averaging four years instead of 20, and a more rational pricing structure based on the supply and demand dynamics of the natural gas market, not the oil market. This means that many of the LNG gasification projects Shell has been developing for years, such as the Gorgon LNG project in northwestern Australia or the Sakhalin 2 LNG project in Siberia, may end up not being as lucrative as originally imagined. Sellers are also choosing to resell gas they don’t need via a newly developing LNG spot market, where prices can differ wildly from contracted prices, much of the time far lower.

A record 70 mtpa of LNG was traded on a spot or short-term basis in 2014, equating to 29% of its total global trade. A competitive spot market for LNG might work to the advantage of certain suppliers, but it could also backfire if there is too much supply on the market at any given moment. Suppliers desperate to move errant cargo of LNG will be forced to sell it at a discount, which could have a profound impact on the entire market.

The spot LNG cargo hasn’t been too disruptive over the last few years, though, given the extraordinary demand for surplus LNG from Japan. The country needed the extra LNG to make up for energy lost from its downed nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima incident in 2011. But Japan no longer needs all that extra LNG due to its weak economy and the potential restart of its nuclear plants. That not only means that it will be much harder for spot cargoes to find a home but also means contract prices for LNG bound for Japan will also suffer, falling as much as 38% through 2016, according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.

Having extra LNG floating around in the market would have been unheard of just a few years ago, but it will become more common in the near future. This is because LNG gasification terminals are being built on spec. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Australia, where both Shell and BG have large LNG interests. An estimated 11 mtpa of LNG production capacity under construction is unspoken for, according to Tri-Zen, a consultancy. Such a huge amount of LNG without a home is alarming and could move the overall LNG market to the downside.

China is expected to absorb a lot of the LNG set to come online in the next few years. The country has a number of regasification terminals under construction to receive the LNG shipments, much of which is expected to come from Australia. But unlike Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, which have no choice but to use LNG for its gas needs, China has options. Not only does China have its own domestic natural gas production, it also can easily receive natural gas from producers via pipeline. For example, Russia announced last year that it had inked a deal with China to deliver $400 billion worth of natural gas over the next 30 years.

If China can receive billions of dollars’ worth of Russia gas through a pipeline at a fraction of the cost of LNG, then it is unlikely that China will want to expand its LNG intake capacity beyond what’s currently on the books. With China out of the mix, suppliers have a big problem. As more capacity is turned on, a price war could break out, causing LNG prices to sink like a rock. While that might be great news to consumers in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, it doesn’t bode well for Shell’s acquisition of BG Group.

Summary: While being bigger is usually better in the energy world, it may not pay off as well in the world of liquified natural gas.


Heather Campbell Smith of New York, promotion manager at Alfred A. Knopf Inc., publishers, plans to be married in June to Jeffrey Michael Collins of New York, an assistant vice president and manager of the commodity news department at E.F. Hutton & Company.

Their engagement has been announced by Dr. and Mrs. Barton P. Smith of Westwood, Mass., parents of the future bride, whose fiance is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Collins of Huntington, L. I.

Miss Smith is an alumna of Milton Academy and Goucher College.

Her father is a internist, and her mother, Jane Smith, is director of community services for the South Norfolk (Mass.) Association for Retarded Citizens.

Mr. Collins, a graduate of Hamilton College, has a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He served for two years with the Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast. His father is a vice president in the marine and aviation department of Johnson & Higgins, insurance brokers.

Illustrations: photo of Heather Smith