Lifestyle

Gregor Gregersen, Founder of Silver Bullion, On the Precious Metals Market in 2023

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Gregor Gregersen, Founder of Silver Bullion, On the Precious Metals Market in 2023

February 15, 2023
4:20 pm

“My fascination for financial markets was thus replaced by an unrelenting drive to create an alternative, truly secure, wealth storage independent of politics and counterparties.”

By Joseph Low

Precious metals like gold and silver have been gaining prominence in the last few years. These commodities are becoming the preferred choice for retail investors to hedge against the impending recession. As a result of this growing interest, prices for gold and silver have risen more drastically such that people make a beeline to own bars of it.

Now, not everyone has the luxury of space to store gold or silver bars at home so that is how Silver Bullion and The Safe House come into play. Gregor Gregersen, the founder of the Silver Bullion, believes that more and more people will look towards building a robust precious metals portfolio and his company will be able to satisfy this demand for a secure and reliable storage facility.

Ahead, we speak with him to learn more about the precious metals market in the coming years and his motivation behind building one of the highest capacity vaults worldwide — The Reserve.

Hi Gregor, how did you become interested in precious metals, and could you tell us more about Silver Bullion and The Safe House?

I have been fascinated by the stock market since I was little. I became a stockbroker assistant in the US, and eventually ended up working with quants (math PhDs) at a bank’s structured product desk developing custom derivatives for institutions.

I learned to program some of the derivatives that have become our financial system’s little-understood, quadrillion-dollar foundation. These derivatives are complicated bets from different counterparties that offset each other to produce the desired behaviour. Mathematically they might be sound, but they have a fatal flaw in that they work only if all counterparties remain solvent.

This flaw became apparent in 2008 when Lehman Brothers’ US$35 trillion worth of derivative positions defaulted. Being twice the GDP of the United States, its impact brought the financial system within hours of collapsing.

I witnessed the consequences of this collapse, working as a senior data architect at a major bank in Frankfurt, and realised, with absolute certainty, that greed and incompetence had irreparably transformed our financial system into a fragile house of cards. It had become too leveraged and interdependent.

Physical precious metals, like gold and silver, were one of the few real wealth refuges that did not depend on somebody’s solvency, so they were in very high demand as people quickly bought them from every dealer or bank that still had stock.

By the time I decided to buy some physical silver, no physical bars were left. Banks and dealers would only buy back, and in the secondary markets, silver was trading at three times the official price.

I finally managed to buy a 1kg silver bar through a contact at the gift shop of the European Central Bank.

My fascination for financial markets was thus replaced by an unrelenting drive to create an alternative, truly secure, wealth storage independent of politics and counterparties.

This is still the drive behind Silver Bullion, which has delivered to clients over S$1.5 billion (or more than 730 metric tons) of gold and silver to Singapore, and The Safe House vault, which is safeguarding much of this bullion for our clients.

There are different types of commodities that one can invest in other than metals like agriculture and energy. Why are precious metals the preferred choice over other commodities?

Gold and silver are not just commodities. They are the world’s most enduring currencies (currency code XAU and XAG), are intrinsically valuable, practically indestructible, and cannot be printed out of thin air. They are effectively money that appreciates over time. Gold, for example, has appreciated on average by 7.8 per cent per year since 1970, from US$35.96 to around US$1,900 today.

Currencies backed by gold are limited by their gold holdings, which is why no government-issued currency is now backed by gold. Today’s fiat currencies’ worth depends solely on the perceived credibility of the issuer, allowing popular issuers to fund increasingly unsustainable deficits with no plans for repayment other than by issuing more currency.

Fiat currencies nearly always lose value over time through inflation, and eventually, become worthless once confidence in the issuer is lost. In contrast, gold and silver have endured throughout history as they have always been the neutral asset people trust, especially in a crisis.

To put it plainly, in a crisis, do you want to risk holding the next banana money or gold?

These monetary uses set gold and silver apart from other commodities, which must usually be consumed lest they decay.

Various news outlets have forecasted a recession in 2023. Why do you think precious metals are a good buy during a recession?

We are not heading into a normal recession characterised by negative to low growth and low inflation. Instead, most of the developed world is in a stagflation (defined as low growth and high inflation). On average, major currencies lost 9 per cent of their purchasing power in 2022. Such wealth losses have not been seen since the last stagflation ended in the early 1980s.

In a normal recession, the traditional advice is to purchase low-risk bonds, earn interest, and sit out the tough times. In a stagflation, however, buying low-risk bonds that pay 4 per cent or 5 per cent interest while your money loses an average of 9 per cent in purchasing power is not necessarily a good long-term plan.

While inflation might fluctuate year to year, inflation will remain uncomfortably high for the next five to 10 years because so much paper money was created over the past decade. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions are causing trade to recede, making goods harder to make and, therefore, more expensive.

This prolonged high inflation expectation is not just my opinion. Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has made it clear in his 2022 National Day message that low inflation is not likely to return anytime soon.

As people see their dollar wealth erode, they will realise that they need to protect their wealth by buying something that tends to do well in a stagflation.

Precious metals tend to do well in stagflations. For example, during the last decade-long stagflation, the gold prices in US dollars surged from US$35.96 in 1970 to US$459 in 1981, representing an average 26 per cent increase per year for 11 years.

Central banks have already greatly increased their physical gold purchase in 2022. I think mainstream investors will slowly follow suit, ensuring that gold and silver will become increasingly popular this decade.

Why should one invest in silver and could you share with us the outlook of silver in the future?

Silver was the first global trading currency and, along with gold, the foundation of most modern currencies, including the US dollar and Pound Sterling. Silver literally means money in Spanish (plata) and French (argent). The Chinese characters for a bank (银行) literally refer to a place to store silver.

As an industrial metal, silver is indispensable, being the best electrical and thermal conductor and a potent antibacterial agent. Our mobile and electronic devices all have silver in them, which cannot be easily substituted away. When these devices reach end-of-life, they are often discarded in landfills, making the silver unretrievable.

So whereas gold is carefully hoarded, much silver has been literally thrown away a gram at a time over the past 50 years, leaving global silver reserves a tiny fraction of what they used to be. As of 2022, the identifiable above-ground silver inventories are only 52,000 metric tons compared to over 190,000 metric tons of gold that the World Gold Council estimates to exist.

Besides being surprisingly scarce, silver is also historically undervalued. In nature, the ratio of silver to gold is about 16 to 1, which was also the exchange ratio between silver and gold for most of history. However, gold is trading at 75 times the price of silver today, making silver over four times cheaper than its historical mean.

I would define silver as scarce, indispensable, undervalued, and largely forgotten by the mainstream. Most of my personal money is invested in silver, as I expect it to strongly outperform gold as we enter the next precious metal bull market.

Could you share with us why you have decided to build The Reserve in Singapore instead of another place like Malaysia?

Throughout history, when a country with unsustainable debts can no longer monetise their debts effectively, they tend to make drastic changes, usually at the expense of savers.

For example, during the Great Depression in 1933, the US suddenly made gold ownership illegal. It forced individuals to sell their physical gold to the government at US$20.67 per troy ounce or face up to 10 years in prison.

Essentially holding gold in the United States in 1933 became like holding cocaine today, a highly illegal and dangerous endeavour.

Following this gold nationalisation, the government increased the gold price to US$35 per troy ounce, effectively creating 70 per cent more US dollars for the government to spend at the expense of gold holders (today, gold is trading at US$1,850).

People who held their gold outside the United States were unaffected. So, it is important to store gold in a stable, well-funded, trusted jurisdiction that is unlikely to nationalise gold in a crisis.

Storing gold and silver in Singapore, which has no net debts and a fully funded pension system, rather than in highly indebted Western countries whose unfunded pension systems I consider to be a ticking timebomb, is a prudent choice.

Singapore is politically stable, has very low corruption, well-enforced property ownership rights, and investment-grade precious metals are exempted from taxes, which are all good things.

Singapore is also well-regarded internationally. It has a strong regional military presence comprising of over 420,000 active and reserve personnel and a military budget over three times that of Malaysia.

These are the reasons we are investing so heavily in Singapore.

The Reserve is going to be one of the biggest precious metals storage facilities in the world, why have you decided to embark on such a large-scale project and what’s your vision behind this project?

History tends to repeat and recurring cycles can be identified. Every 80 to 100 years, a new superpower replaces the prior one, and every 30 to 40 years, reserve currencies tend to get into a crisis (e.g. the US dollar in the 1970s) and are either saved or replaced. Such cycle transition periods are always painful and often involve wars.

I believe that this decade we will be facing such a transition period and that this will cause great demand for ownership of liquid physical assets, stored in safe jurisdictions in a transparent manner.

The Reserve is built to address this demand by:

Raising Awareness — Physical asset ownership is compelling, but it is difficult to capture people’s attention. The Reserve’s iconic structure symbolises the resurgence of physical assets while providing an attractive venue for related services and events.

Protect Physical Wealth — Since 2009, we have ceaselessly prepared for the next systemic crisis. The Reserve will be the culmination of our efforts and the go-to destination for holistic wealth protection solutions.

Bigger scale, lower costs — The facilities’ high floor loading and 15 high-security vaults allow us to lower per-ton-fixed storage costs by more than an order of magnitude compared to our prior facility. This enables us to efficiently store silver and valuable industrial metals in addition to gold, art, luxury timepieces, and other high-value items.

What are some services that will be offered on The Reserve that make it different from the others in the market?

Most vaults tend to be austere, inaccessible places. The Reserve has a more open, welcoming design and is cleverly compartmentalised to maintain high security without intrusiveness for most visitors.

We are currently storing over S$800 million in precious metals. Visiting the vault will be an experience. In our main 20,000 sqft vault room, we will store silver, and other valuable metals stacked 12 metres high. Walking through this room will be like walking through a canyon of silver.

Our clients can visit one of two labs in the facility that test the metals to learn about the five non-destructive testing processes we developed to authenticate and guarantee the metals.

Also, on site is The Xcess, a specialised bonded watch vault that will have 2,000 watch winders to store high-end timepieces optimally. These watches can be authenticated and maintained at a 2,000 sqft watch workshop within The Reserve. Once stored, the watches can be collateralised by the owner or sold to the highest bidder. Over time we expect to store a very exclusive watch collection.

The Reserve will additionally store art, wine, and whisky. We have approved zoning permission to conduct high-value international auctions in the facility. The facility will be a good venue for exclusive events.

Once this facility is fully operational, we expect third-party banks, family offices, and wealth managers to make use of the facility as well.

The Reserve will redefine what a vault can be.

Silver Bullion offers a unique secured P2P loan service where stored bullion can be collateralized for loans. What are the reasons behind offering this service?

Our secured P2P loan platform was launched in 2015. It allows customers to use their stored, authenticated assets as collateral to obtain loans peer-to-peer. The lenders are other customers who want to lend out cash for interest. Silver Bullion acts as an escrow and provides the platform to match lenders and borrowers based on a bid/ask process.

With this service, our clients have an added option of how they can use their stored assets. Perhaps they have investment opportunities and need liquidity without selling their bullion.

Having passed compliance checks to become storage customers, they can then obtain loans quickly since the collateral is a liquid physical asset. The system is designed to be very safe for lenders, and over the past eight years, we have had no defaults and averaged a yearly interest rate of just 4 per cent pa.

The loan platform has matched nearly half a billion Singapore dollars over 13,000 plus loans since its launch.

The company has been around since 2009, what are your biggest takeways from those years?

Maintaining a high level of trust and transparency with our clients is paramount. Sales are secondary to always building and maintaining this trust.

Strict AML/KYC and authentication processes are also indispensable to protect our customers and us. This is particularly true as we grow and invest so much capital into The Reserve.

Lastly, we are more than a conventional bullion dealer. We provide advanced systemic wealth protection solutions whereby precious metals play a big role. This important mindset distinction leads to, sometimes, radically different approaches compared to traditional gold vaults and dealers.

If you weren’t in the precious metals industry, what would you be doing for a living?

I would be developing smart software (a kind of AI) to optimise vegetable growth efficiencies for urban farming and franchise the systems. I hope to do this in the future .

Winemaker Laurent Delaunay: Spotlighting the House of Edouard Delaunay

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Winemaker Laurent Delaunay: Spotlighting the House of Edouard Delaunay

February 9, 2023
1:07 am

Laurent Delaunay revives family wine business, House of Edouard Delaunay, with focus on precise wine-making from exceptional Burgundy terroirs.

By Joseph Low

Laurent Delaunay, representing the fifth generation of a family of winemakers and negociants, is reappropriating his family’s history. Though it had progressively declined over the last several years, the House of Edouard Delaunay, an old Maison with a rich and unique history, has always been closely connected to the Burgundy wine trade and was considerably involved in the epic intercontinental expansion the industry experienced throughout the entire 20th century. Bought back in 2017 by Laurent Delaunay, the great-grandson of the founder, it strives to regain its place within the inner circle of the great houses of Burgundy through the meticulous and precise vinification and ageing of exceptional wines from some of Burgundy’s finest terroirs.

Could you tell us about your youth and your early connection to winemaking?

Our family has been in winemaking since the 19th century. Delaunay has been a well-established name in Burgundy across the whole of the 20th century. I grew up with my father and my grandfather in the cellar and the vineyards and I started to work there with my father in 1989 after my studies in the US (Napa Valley). After a few years we were obliged to sell for various reasons. One was that my father was ill with Alzheimer’s disease, so he made some wrong decisions in terms of investments. The other reason was that it was in the early 1990s, and the economic situation became very complicated with the cost of oil going up with the first Gulf War. The business was therefore sold in a friendly transaction to a leading Burgundy negociant.

This then led you to new adventures in winemaking right?

Indeed! I stayed with the new owners for a couple of years, but I decided to branch out in 1995 with my wife Catherine, also a trained oenologist. We wanted to recover our independence, so we left and started our own company in the south of France. This is how we started Badet Clément to make wine in the Languedoc, Rhône Valley and Provence. The company became known for its “Les Jamelles” brand of varietal wines from Pays d’Oc, its high-end label Abbotts & Delaunay, and for selling more than 15 million bottles of wine around the world. It was a boom time in the south of France in the 1990s. Yet I always kept the dream of coming back to Burgundy and creating my own brand, my own range there.

Tell us about your return to Burgundy.

Château de Charmont

It is an amazing twist of life. The first step came in 2003 when our company Badet Clément purchased DVP (Domaines & Vins de Propriété), which distributes Burgundian domains. But the big step actually came in 2017 when we purchased the Edouard Delaunay brand name from the Burgundy negociant we had sold the brand to back in 1993 and some other buildings from relatives. We carried out extensive refurbishment at the château (Château de Charmont), which dates from the 19th century, the vaulted cellars and the buildings next door, which date from the 1950s and 60s and have been renovated in the style of factories from the 1920s and 30s. The metal beams and pillars, for example, are reminiscent of the metalwork used in the Eiffel Tower.

Looks like it is a dream which came true for you.

Indeed, this has been a project very close to my heart and a dream that has come true. My grandfather used to say that the House of Edouard Delaunay was “the smallest of the great Houses’’. My ambition is to return it to its former glory and make Edouard Delaunay a leading Burgundian wine house once more. We are on the right track to achieving such a goal.

What was it like to start from scratch in 2017 again and produce your first cuvee later on?

As mentioned, the first thing needed in January 2017 was to restore the château and winery in time for that year’s harvest. Next, we needed to put together a team, and I was able to hire a young and talented winemaker, Christophe Briotet. But the most complicated was finding grapes as we didn’t have our own vineyards. We were fortunate to have many friends and family members in the trade and obviously our connections with many small producers thanks to Badet-Clément’s DVP marketing arm really helped us. I was highly surprised that so many of them accepted our offer to buy their grapes, but then they all saw it as our “Renaissance” (rebirth), and for them it was also an amazing and rather unique story. A family that had ventured a few regions away and who was then truly back to Burgundy!

You have mentioned several times the importance of packaging and service to clients. Do you feel that you have actually adopted the codes of luxury Houses?

This is correct. From 2018 onwards all ranges of Edouard Delaunay wines have come in “luxury” packaging. We have paid a lot of attention to packaging because in Burgundy the wines are expensive and so it means that — worldwide and especially in Asia — people who can afford Burgundy wines are also people who purchase luxury goods. I feel that in Burgundy, very often, we pay a lot of attention to the quality of the wine but all that is around the wine – the packaging and the service – is not of the same quality. We wish to change that specific perception. We actually take our inspiration from Champagne or Cognac for the packaging as well as for the servicing and marketing to the consumers.

Do you have any expansion plans?

In Burgundy, we see the Hautes Côtes as a prime place for expansion, especially because of its high altitude which makes the grapes less prone to weather problems. The Hautes have actually much-unplanted land that is not classified and we can see the eventual production of single-vineyard wines from the region.

What are the key drivers which you follow daily?

My philosophy is all about listening, reading the terroir and the vines’ condition; trying to understand, and gently accompanying the natural evolution of the wine.

You have been elected president of the BIVB, the Burgundy Wine Board. What has been your key message to the BIVB members?

The need to keep track of trends in the wine trade worldwide. The need to understand the impact of climate change on the Burgundy region. I also keep stressing the need for Burgundy to keep open lines of communication with customers and the duty of the region to practice social responsibility. On a lighter tone, I also wish that people across the globe know how to pronounce Bourgogne and not only Burgundy.

How do you view Burgundy wine lovers in Asia versus European or American regular Burgundy wine drinkers? How do their taste or requests differ?

My grandfather established a presence in Singapore as early as 1932. Asia and Asian consumers have always been highly regarded in our family. I am very impressed by the level of knowledge Asian drinkers have about Burgundy. The US market has been a leading purchaser of Burgundy wines for over a century, yet Asia is catching up fast, and the wine audience is avid to learn and understand our complicated region classification. It is quite refreshing for a winemaker to know that the ultimate consumer knows what he or she is drinking.

Talking about Asia, tell us more about Badet-Clément’s presence in this part of the world?

Badet-Clément has a regional bureau in Hong Kong with a highly active, experienced and mobile team headed by Olivier Hui-Bon-Hoa. We also have a presence in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam and lately in the Philippines.

Have you seen the 2017 movie by Cedric Klapisch “Ce qui nous Lie” (“Back To Burgundy”)? How did you personally react to that movie set in Burgundy and focusing on inheritance issues?

My wife and myself truly enjoyed Cedric Klapisch’s movie “Ce qui nous Lie”. It is a movie that is very touching for the local community because the story it tells is very realistic. Every wine-growing family has had to face the difficulty of arranging the transmission of the estate to the next generation, and it is a challenge we all must live with, especially at a time of rising land prices (inheritance taxes are on the high side in France). Cedric Klapisch shows these difficulties in a very straightforward light.

Your career and overall entrepreneurship story is amazing, have you got anything you wish to work on?

Yes, speaking in public. But I have progressed rather well on that matter by taking courses at the famed Cours Florent in Paris.

If you were to name someone who has influenced you in your career as an entrepreneur, whom would that be?

I learned a lot in terms of entrepreneurship and business from Jean-Claude Boisset, one of the smartest wine entrepreneurs I have met.

I also learned a lot from Aubert de Villaine. What I like is not only his wine philosophy but his life philosophy. I appreciate that he is not only one of the most emblematic producers of Burgundy but he has a vision, his thinking is across several generations, and he is very sensitive of the fact that in a traditional region like Burgundy, we do not inherit, we simply pass the land on. This gives you a vision and a perspective across centuries. You have to think and consider the consequences in the long term.

Website: www.edouard-delaunay.com Contact details: Gabriel Camphuis – gabriel.camphuis@edouard-delaunay.com

Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe On the Brand Being a Trend Maker

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe On the Brand Being a Trend Maker

February 1, 2023
11:56 pm

Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe takes us through the art of fusion, and how clever marketing can build a bright future for traditional watchmaking.

By Ashok Soman and Asaph Low

The contemporary marketing machine that powers Swiss fine watchmaking is, arguably, inextricably linked with the story of Hublot. Famously, the brand emerged from what was then a shocking idea: what if you combined gold with rubber in a luxury timepiece? Such watches are everywhere these days, from the most storied watchmakers to independents working with a completely classical mien. This fact alone was not enough to turn Hublot into the powerhouse it is today, with approximately 60,000 watches produced annually; the brand is one of the most prominent faces of Swiss watchmaking today, what with it being the official timekeeper of the FIFA World Cup, which you cannot have missed, even if you are not interested in the football (and call it soccer).

While all watch collectors associate Hublot with its former boss, the magnetic Jean-Claude Biver, its success is the result of the work of an entire team, one of whom is the current CEO Ricardo Guadalupe. Enticed by Biver to join him at Hublot in 2004, Guadalupe has been at the brand for all its hits, including the explosive trendsetter that was the Big Bang in 2005 and the controversial marketing campaign featuring former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone in 2010. That last one was about a literal hit, and correctly predicted a startling growth in criminals targeting the watch collectors in Europe.

Trends were a big deal for Hublot under Biver, who still urges watchmaking brands to seize the opportunity with unoccupied niches, or special offerings. Since Guadalupe took on the top job in 2012, Hublot has largely stayed the course, enshrining its forward-thinking approach in its own brand identity. “Hublot, in order to succeed, had to be different compared to other traditional brands,” Guadalupe told Gulf Business in 2021. “Why else would someone buy a classic Hublot from a 40-year-old brand when they can have beautiful watches from brands that have been in existence for over 100 years?”

We caught up with Guadalupe when he was in town a couple of months ago for the launch of the Hublot boutique in ION Orchard.

Before getting into the story of Hublot itself, you became CEO a little more than 10 years ago. How did you handle the challenge of stepping out of the shadow of Jean-Claude Biver? Arguably, his reputation continues to loom over the brand itself.

In fact, I was already in the brand since 2004, so (I know Mr Biver’s style)… and I was part of the brand’s success even before I took over (as CEO) in 2012. Of course, I am different from Mr Biver, who was very closely linked to Hublot (as a larger-than-life personality) and my priority when I took over was to have the brand stand on its own. The big challenge was to make the brand bigger and more important than any one person, and we achieved that. Today, Hublot alone is an important brand in the watch industry. What I want is for Hublot to stand on its own merits when, one day, I leave the brand.

Hublot was founded slightly more than 40 years ago, in 1980. What are some principles or values that Hublot continues to emphasise?

Hublot represents the Art of Fusion in watchmaking, and the brand did it in 1980 for the first time. It came up with a watch made of yellow gold (a traditional luxury material) with a rubber strap, which is a modern material. This fusion is what we call the Art of Fusion, linking tradition with innovation.

What phase do you think Hublot is at with its “Art of Fusion” motto?

We work on three pillars, and we can bring fusion into design. The Murakami watch, for instance, is a fusion of the art of Murakami and the Hublot art, and we realise a watch that becomes a work of art.

I think consumers are waiting for this kind of product because a mechanical watch today is not important for telling time. It’s important for what it represents, the object (and attendant emotions) it represents.

When it comes to materials, we always try to be innovative. We have coloured ceramics such as red and yellow. We industrialised sapphire crystal in 2016, and we are the only brand to have coloured sapphire, and produce sapphire crystal watches at a certain price point, even though they are expensive. We work on different alloys too (including Magic Gold and King Gold).

And from the movement side, we created the Unico chronograph calibre, various special calibres, and our tourbillon. We are creating new calibres for the future, but it takes years of development, and not months. We try at every level to be innovative.

That’s the key element for the success of Hublot in the future.

Speaking of the future, we are seeing unprecedented demand for fine watches. Do you think it really is unprecedented, and how is Hublot coping?

Yeah, it’s true, demand is really high and I’ve never seen that in my career. I think what I have done in the last 10 years at Hublot (sort of anticipating this moment in history) is building a manufacture, an integrated manufacture, being able to produce ourselves, not everything, but parts of the production of movements and in material innovation as well. This allows us to have quite good flexibility in production…of course (this does not mean) we can double our production like this [snaps his fingers]. I think we can manage to grow (and keep up with demand) with the investments we have made in our own industrial capacity.

We have also built strong relationships with our suppliers; we form an important part of their business. This is useful because when you are important to a supplier, you can ask for more and maybe they allocate more for you than other brands. Of course, we share suppliers with a number of brands… Being loyal to our suppliers over a number of years is also important to us, especially during the Covid lockdowns because many suppliers had a tough time, and had to fire staff… we tried to support as much as we could.

How does Hublot optimise its product strategy with the ever-changing taste of consumers?

We try to be innovative and creative and invest a lot in R&D in materials, movements (and in mechanics), and design. These are the three main pillars on which we work.

We try to create trends, and with our innovations and creativity, we can please the existing consumer and new consumers coming in with what we can offer. The key element is always to be innovative, and we do it more by instinct. We don’t analyse other trends; we create the trend.

How has Hublot’s presence in football helped the manufacture reach its marketing goals?

We entered football in 2006 with a very small partnership, and then in 2008, we had the Euro cup in Switzerland. And Mr Biver, at that time, thought about which sport we could support as a partner to communicate about our brand.

If you look at tennis, it’s quite complicated; if you look at golf, it’s complicated. And for football, there is no watch brand. Football is a very popular sport; it talks to not only our potential consumers but billions of people. Football has brought us brand awareness.

When I started working at Hublot in 2004, people in Switzerland didn’t know about Hublot. Today we can say that, in general, people know Hublot is a watch brand. And thanks to football, it was an accelerator for brand awareness, especially with the Hublot Big Bang Unico-shaped Referee Board that we had in Brazil.

Billions of people have seen it, so it is very positive for us and allowed us to be a strong brand in the world thanks to football.

Hublot ambassador Kylian Mbappé is currently one of football’s biggest stars. What do you admire most about him?

Kylian Mbappé wearing Big Bang e FIFA watch

To take an active player was a decision. When you have an active player, you can have good and sometimes negative parts, such as injuries or issues in his private life. When you have a legend like the late Pelé, he will remain a legend forever. But at a certain point, I saw this link between a legend and an active player, and I saw it through Kylian Mbappé. Even Pelé sees him as (a successor of sorts) because he won the World Cup at a very young age as Pelé did; they have similar looks and playing styles.

Mbappé accepted to be our ambassador; I think he’s a great personality, very positive. He has values of being serious and passionate, and he has success, so that’s important.

Ambassadorship is one of the main pillars of Hublot’s marketing strategy. What are some values that Hublot looks out for in potential ambassadors?

First of all, we need to have good alchemy in human relationships. An ambassador has to like our brand and not just do a commercial deal. So we always have dinner or spend a moment with the ambassador before signing anything. Of course, they have to carry the values of passion, having success and being aspirational to the young generation.

Akila Leverages Data and Technology to Improve Companies’ ESG Efforts

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Akila Leverages Data and Technology to Improve Companies’ ESG Efforts

January 26, 2023
5:24 pm

Akila is a digital twin platform built to revolutionise sustainability, performance and human-centricity in the built environment, while also streamlining ESG reporting for C-suites.

By Joseph Low

Akila is a real-estate data and management platform founded in 2021 that uses digital twin and AI technologies to empower data-driven decision making and ESG for large and multinational portfolios. How was the concept of Akila nurtured?

Akila started with a group of people from different fields related to the built environment: 3D design and simulation, system engineering, energy, construction, IoT and smart buildings, and facility management. What united us was a recognition that buildings contribute a massive share of all carbon emissions, approximately 40 per cent in fact, and that the sector still ranks bottom three for digitalisation. This simply must change. So, we were resolved to create a platform capable of driving a sustainability transformation in the built environment. This is a transformation oriented around data, digitalisation, improved performance and ESG. It very much includes the luxury industry and its built assets — mining operations, factories, warehouses, retail spaces, yachts and more.

There were many steps to get us where we are today. We took a lot of inspiration from the example of our strategic partners, Dassault Systèmes. From the 1980s onwards, they completely transformed manufacturing in the aerospace and automotive industries, using digital twin and 3D simulation to move from an analogue and paper-based system to one that was fully digital and model-based, leveraging the concept of a single source of truth from design through production and operation.

Now we want to do the same thing for the built environment, helping businesses and portfolio holders achieve massive decarbonisation across their holdings. We can achieve this because the Akila platform is an enabling technology capable of optimising across the value chain from design and construction to operations, all the way until decommissioning. In Akila, we are confident we have built a unique digital twin platform, carefully designed for the age of ESG.

Tell us about the close relationship between Akila and Aden Group?

Aden Group was the incubator of Akila and remains one of its three main strategic partners, alongside Dassault Systèmes and Microsoft. From Aden Group, we have been able to draw on 25 years of hands-on expertise managing complex operations at large facilities — factories, industrial parks, commercial space, retail space, etc. That experience has greatly informed the development of Akila because, alongside ESG and performance dashboards for high-level decision-makers, Akila is also designed as a solution for operational teams at sites. So, the functionalities of Akila have been very deeply informed by Aden’s decades of experience understanding client needs, resolving their pain points and making their buildings into high-performing, high-comfort, human-centric spaces.

Another exciting thing is that our partnership with Aden Group opens up opportunities to collaborate on net-zero carbon projects with other entities under the Aden Group umbrella. I am thinking especially of Tera Energies, the clean-energy JV it co-founded Total-Eren, and NXpark, a series of turn-key Industry 4.0 industrial parks that it is developing in China right now. Simply put, we are stronger together, and able to make an even stronger push for decarbonization and optimisation.

How instrumental has Dassault Systèmes been in the definition of the data to be collected and overall process of these?

As I mentioned earlier, Dassault Systèmes are truly pioneers in the field of 3D design and simulation. Over the past 40 years, they have become global leaders in software for advanced simulation and 3D modelling. Having Dassault Systèmes as one of our three main strategic partners has greatly expanded our capabilities in two areas especially.

First, Dassault Systèmes is central when creating and maintaining what we call the “digital thread” of a site in the built environment. This ensures that a single source of truth is preserved for a project through design, construction, commissioning, and then the Akila integration makes sure that this digital thread is maintained through operations. Only by having accurate data inputs can you have accurate outputs — otherwise, as the saying goes: garbage-in, garbage-out. Dassault Systèmes ensures the integrity of all structural data that goes into our platform.

Secondly, Dassault Systèmes software enables advanced simulation of an enormous range of scenarios for a building or asset without limitation. This includes things like energy simulation, thermal comfort simulation, carbon footprint calculation and more. In effect, we are able to merge the virtual and physical world for a continuous loop of optimisation and “see into the future” in ways that facilitate smarter and more sustainable building design for greenfield projects. Then, during the operational phase of a building, this simulation capability enables critical carbon-reducing features like predictive maintenance — this means we can target potential issues before they impact operations and cause unnecessary environmental impact.

Who are the key members of the Akila team?

Honestly, too many to name. Since our founding, we have grown from a team of five to 80, and we’ll see that number continue to rise. Our founding team is multicultural and multinational, bringing together high-level tech, business and sustainability experts from across a range of global tech, consulting and industrial groups. Our backgrounds cover ESG, energy, engineering, construction, PropTech and LEED. We started in China, but we’ve been expanding fast in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, with two main divisions: SaaS as well as an Architecture & Engineering Technologies division.

Akila’s Energy Savings Tracker: a smarter, simpler way to measure impact. What specific solutions is Akila providing?

Many companies are already undertaking energy-savings projects but lack the tools to successfully conduct and measure optimisation at scale. For instance, some companies don’t have a clear picture of how much energy they are consuming and where the inefficiencies lay — they can only compare energy bills side-by-side, for the crudest measurement of energy consumption. Or, they have undertaken energy optimisation projects, but they are still working off massive Excel sheets, dependent upon manual input and management. This limits how often measurement can take place, brings the risk of human error, and proves enormously difficult to coordinate across sites and borders.

These are the problems Akila Energy Savings Tracker addresses. The platform uses IoT to create a transparent energy-consumption baseline for each site, down to the level of individual pieces of equipment. Then, it tracks all subsequent energy consumption in real time, in the same digital space, using the same metrics. That means that at any point you can measure in exact terms how much energy has been saved for any equipment, facility, or portfolio over any period of time, and also calculate the change in carbon emissions that has been produced.

Real-time data and analytics in a user-friendly dashboard — is that the key message delivered to decision makers?

Akila workspace energy matrix. Image: Akila

Yes, it is one of the key messages. Akila is designed to facilitate faster, better decision-making among C-level leadership. We believe that centralising key information relating to ESG and building performance into a customisable “portfolio performance cockpit” is one of the best ways to achieve this. Importantly, this is not just a static report, but a dynamically updated one, so that leadership can be updated immediately if there are any irregularities at a particular site and ensure that they are followed up on in the fastest manner possible.

Is the Akila team acting as an adviser — can the team support clients in high ESG risk industries to develop their climate transition strategies?

In these cases, Akila is the enabler and we work with specialists to produce a detailed report. Those specialists can be either the company’s in-house experts or can be drawn from one of the consultancy firms in our own network. Either way, when this groundwork is done, Akila parametrises its solutions to meet the specific recommendations and needs of the company. We are then able to greatly simplify the execution of tour clients’ climate transition by automating the collection of data covering Scopes 1, 2 and 3.

Which clients have started implementing the various Akila solutions?

We are working with American, Japanese and European multinationals, many of whom are currently running pilots in China and Southeast Asia as a first step towards a global deployment. One of our biggest contracts for ESG and decarbonisation is in the retail sector (expect a public announcement about this very soon), but to date the largest share of our client base has been in industry and manufacturing, including automotive, construction equipment, electronics, and petrochemicals.

The beauty of the platform, though, is that any building or asset in any sector produces data, and Akila can help harness and scale this data collection, no matter what type of building or sector. We also have used Akila to help clients link and optimise multisite portfolios covering commercial buildings, warehouses, even hospitals and international schools.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has just recognised Akila as a fast rising player in the ESG space. The highly selective award recognises annually the top 100 early- to growth-stage worldwide that are shaping the future by advancing technologies. How such an award impacts on the whole team at Akila?

Yes, we were selected as one of 100 global startups to join the WEF’s 2022 Technology Pioneers cohort. Needless to say, this was a big milestone and will really help us connect with high-level audiences and partners in our mission of decarbonisation. To us, it is an indication that the things driving Akila — the climate crisis, the rise of ESG, digitalisation as the key to decarbonisation — are also resonating with a wider audience and people at the highest levels of business, technology and government.

As members of the Technology Pioneers cohort, we are able to connect directly with the WEF through working groups (we have just joined the Digital Twin Cities Advisory committee in Beijing, for example), as well as WEF events and networking in a group whose alumni include Google, Airbnb, Spotify, Wikimedia and many other massive tech companies.

Do you see growing number of companies integrating ESG into their investment process?

Absolutely. And this makes good sense because ESG has always been structured from an investor point of view — making it easier and more reliable for investors to assess different companies on sustainability and best practice metrics. Looking at the luxury industry today, different companies are in different places on the journey, but the trend towards ESG is clear and lasting. It’s safe to say that in the coming years, sustainability — based on transparent, quantitative ESG data — will be one of the key markers of a premium brand, right alongside traditional measures like the grade of materials, craftsmanship and design, etc.

What is driving this is a real convergence in different sectors. On one hand, there is a wave of tougher government and industry regulation, but just as important is the market pressure coming from consumers themselves. This makes the robustness of a company’s ESG and sustainability policies a major strategic concern. Buyers today think about sustainability and carbon impact more than ever before and have been empowered by a new wave of apps and other tools to do their own research on a company’s impact. And, they are spending accordingly. In the past, companies have been able to pay lip service to sustainability and just greenwash, but ESG really takes an axe to that. The new reality is that companies which proactively adopt ESG policies will win, while greenwashers will pay. There will be nowhere to hide.

Overall, what should a company do to make sure its social and governance-focused targets are credible and ambitious?

They must put a premium on the transparency of their data. How do you achieve this? It requires digital transformation, carried out systemically across whole portfolios and across the property lifecycle — concept to operations all the way to operations and decommissioning. For credibility, companies also need third-party auditing of their data. Akila enables the needed traceability, and is designed to ensure a coherent structure of ESG data, making this process transparent and smooth.

As for ensuring that targets are ambitious enough, that needs to be taken on a case-by-case, looking at the clients’ specifics and taking into account industry benchmarking. It’s also important to remember that ESG is not something you start today and finish tomorrow — it is a process, and continuous improvement is the name of the game. Akila is the tool that lets companies document this trajectory in great detail. And by working with organisations like SBTi (of which Akila is a partner), targets can be set in both an ambitious and scientific way.

Where do you see Akila in five years?

Well, by 2027, we won’t need to explain what a digital twin or ESG are anymore, because both will have become so prevalent in business and life. Our ambition by that point is to have become one of the defining digital tools of this ESG era, and to have accelerated a substantial change in the carbon emissions of buildings and cities.

How do we get there? Our Asia-first strategy and the fact that we are operational inside and outside of China will be very important. Asia will remain the world’s most dynamic economic zone. Then as now, it will be the place where MNCs have the freedom to pilot new technologies ahead of their global rollout. We have already begun this process with many major global clients, and we see this as a path we’ll continue on over the next five years: in short, we’ll be taking Akila from Asia to the world.

The other aspect we will see developing more is Akila’s open Ecosystem — a space we can conceptualise as a kind of app store for buildings and assets in the ESG era. Akila is designed as an open platform, so that partners with strong vertical specialisations can offer integrations inside the Akila platform. We have already begun this process by working with partners in industries like AR (augmented reality), but in five years we should see this really coming to fruition.

To learn more about Akila and its services, click here or email at: solutions@akila3d.com

The Ultimate Maldives Island Experience For Those In Search of True Balance of Mind, Body and Soul

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

The Ultimate Maldives Island Experience For Those In Search of True Balance of Mind, Body and Soul

January 19, 2023
1:28 pm

ElE|NA Launches “Wellness Your Way” at OZEN RESERVE BOLIFUSHI.

By LUXUO

The Maldives, with its famously crystal clear waters is a dream destination for travellers from all around the world. The number one destination for anyone seeking peace and tranquillity. Launching into this market sees global leading wellness brand ElE|NA partnered with the award-winning luxury resort OZEN RESERVE BOLIFUSHI, a part of THE OZEN COLLECTION, this unique sophisticated wellness brand is rewriting the rule book named “Wellness Your Way” available to all.

Guests get to be immersed fully in the island through its ultimate holistic journey of wellness, healing, and relaxation within the cocoon of exceptional surroundings of OZEN RESERVE BOLIFUSHI. This journey will invite the guests to feel rejuvenated and refreshed through lasting, transformative experiences characterised by the curation of the very finest local, healing traditions and international spa treatments. Using naturally energising natural products, the experience is designed to help you rediscover your inner balance and an enduring sensation of tranquil energy.

ElE|NA wellness rejuvenation journey is bespoke to each guest, with each journey designed by our resident Ayurvedic doctors according to fully researched healing programmes that also include exclusively curated plant-based nutrition meal plans, therapies, and specially designed activities, all of which are geared towards enhancing your island experience and health.

For the journey towards ultimate zen, each guest’s residence is transformed into a personalised private paradise, designed to offer pure relaxation at every opportunity. Through the customised programmes, guests will be more in-tuned with Mother Nature and reap its benefits with this reconnection. At night, the ambience is made to be conducive for a good sleep, an essential part of any rejuvenating experience.

ELE|NA is talilored to all and caters to diverse journey options including chronic pain management; anti-anxiety/stress programme; gut health and detox; sleep therapy; age-defying; wellness for cancer and weight loss. With its suite of exceptional choices, beauty, and spa experiences, dovetail seamlessly with the many benefits and attributes of a world-class retreat to ensure a perfectly balanced stay replete with all the fun, adventure, and indulgence of a blissful tropical holiday experience.

For more travel reads, click here.

Cirrus Aircraft is Every Aviator’s Dream

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Cirrus Aircraft is Every Aviator’s Dream

January 18, 2023
10:02 am

The SR Series not only provides comfort when flying, but its safety features also ensure peace of mind.

By Joseph Low

Jan Ralph and his wife.

Humans have made great leaps in aviation since the Wright brothers first took flight. From the first personal aircraft to commercial jetliners, aircraft have become essential to regional and long-distance commutes. For business or personal travel needs, journeying through the sky confers a sense of exhilaration unfound in conventional forms of transport like taking a train, driving or sailing on a ship. The idea of freedom commonly associated with air travel draws people to explore the blue skies.

To help aviation enthusiasts with their quest to conquer the sky, companies like Cirrus Aircraft have created the best-selling personal aircraft and robust training programs to teach people how to fly. Starting with the VK-30 in 1984, Cirrus Aircraft has since grown to focus on manufacturing the SR Series piston aircraft and the SF-50 Vision Jet the world’s first Personal Jet™. The SR Series comes in three models, each being a single-engine, piston composite aircraft – touted to be a game-changer in the personal aviation industry. This year marks the delivery of the 9,000th SR Series aircraft. Worldwide flight time on Cirrus Aircraft has passed 15 million hours, and 240 people have returned home safely because of advanced safety systems such as the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS).

With nearly 40 years of experience in the personal aviation industry, Cirrus Aircraft has consistently ranked at the top for customer satisfaction. Jan Ralph is a Cirrus Aircraft customer who owns a 2018 G6 SR22 aircraft with a Cirrus Airframe Parachute System, Garmin’s Perspective+ and is fully air-conditioned. Jan is the father of two children and has been interested in aviation since he was young. He started with Airfix models and then onto remote control aircraft.

Visiting the Biggin Hill airshow in the UK was an annual pilgrimage for Jan when he was a child. At 11 years old, his father paid for a trial flying lesson that eventually paved the way for him to obtain a Private Pilot License in 2018 and a subsequent Instrument Rating in 2019.

Jan selected the Cirrus SR22 for its unique and advanced flying qualities.

“It’s a real ‘get there’ aircraft with long-distance capabilities and amazing avionics, which helps lessen the workload for the types of flying we do in Asia,” shares Jan. “The CAPS also provides great comfort in flying with my family over the jungles and palm plantations of Malaysia and Indonesia, serving as an additional safety feature. Additionally, the comfort of the cabin is really the best choice for my missions.”

Jan further adds that regionally, in Southeast Asia, the Cirrus SR22 is best suited for private travel. Its superb range makes flying across the region a breeze and a comfortable ride. Experiencing all of this first-hand was Jan, who had since flown to many nearby places like Langkawi, Tioman Islands and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. The trip was done during the tail-end of Covid-19 restrictions in Singapore and vaccinated travel was the only way out of the country.

“Toward the end of Covid when borders were opening a little, and vaccinated travel lanes were very expensive and hard to secure, we were able to fly direct to Langkawi and other parts of Malaysia while many others were not. I was the first international flight into Tioman Island at the beginning of April and have been there 17 times since borders opened up,” said Jan. “Getting from Singapore to Tioman would usually take over seven hours via driving and ferry, but with the Cirrus SR22 we can reach the amazing island of Tioman in 37 mins.”

Most recently, Ralph had just completed his trip from Singapore to Australia and clocked over 54 flying hours while covering over 10,000 miles.

“Our mission was to fly and collect another Cirrus aircraft which had its annual maintenance check at Air Gold Coast but was stranded due to Covid-19,” said Jan. “I flew with a friend/Chief Flight Instructor and two-time earth rounder to collect the G3 SR22 and then flew back in convoy.”

Along the way, Jan stopped at several stunning places like Karumba and Shute Harbour. As with all journeys, there will be times when skills are tested and that happened to be over the long water crossings from Timor to Darwin and across Indonesia.

“This trip really tested my pilot skills, and I got to know how capable the aircraft is. I plan to make this a yearly trip now to Australia and next year. I am also looking to fly from Singapore to the UK.”

Leonardo da Vinci said, “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

For those fortunate to experience flying, the desire to return to the skies will only grow stronger as is the case for Jan. Cirrus Aircraft’s range of models, flight training programme and emphasis on safety makes it one of the industry-leading companies for aviation enthusiasts.

Learn how to fly a Cirrus by contacting, Wings Over Asia at (+65) 6659 6225.

Ring in Chinese New Year with These Alcohol Picks

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Ring in Chinese New Year with These Alcohol Picks

January 12, 2023
12:31 pm

A great year starts with a good toast, and here are 5 to pick from this Chinese New Year.

By Joseph Low

For Chinese all over the world, the upcoming Spring Festival or Chinese New Year is a massive affair that will see one of the largest human migrations and the highest consumption of food and drinks. Undoubtedly, alcohol ranks near the top of the list and comprises spirits like whisky, gin and cognac. From the Macallan to Glenfiddich and Royal Salute, say “Cheers!” to the new year with these exquisite drinks.

The Macallan: A Night On Earth in Scotland

Inspired by Hogmanay, the traditional Scottish New Year’s Eve celebration, this limited-edition whisky makes a great gift this Lunar New Year as it parallels the universal optimism and joyfulness that binds both festivities together. Packaged in red, a symbol of great fortune, the whisky’s natural warm amber hue also complements the rich colour of its presentation box.

Crafted from a selection of The Macallan’s sherry seasoned American and European oak casks and ex-bourbon barrels, the whisky exudes notes of sweet vanilla, baked apples and baking biscuits on the nose. Taking a sip, the liquid’s soft velvety mouthfeel coats the palate and brings to mind shortbread along with toasted marshmallows, dried oranges, figs and cinnamon. The finish is medium with a lingering sweetness of butterscotch and freshly baked biscuits.

Royal Salute Lunar New Year Special Edition

A main staple at any celebrations, Royal Salute was created in 1953 to rejoice in momentous occasions like the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Continuing this long history, the distiller presents the Royal Salute Lunar New Year Special Edition to “Ignite the New Year”. Featuring a myriad of symbolic motifs like drums, lanterns, and celebratory streamers, the hand-crafted ruby flagon is believed to bring you and your family fortune and prosperity in the year ahead.

The bottle contains Royal Salute’s iconic 21-Year-Old Signature Blend with fruity and floral notes and a hint of sherry spice. The whisky’s sophisticated and opulent character complements flawlessly with its gift box’s design, which was inspired by traditional Chinese painting, literature and historical culture by renowned illustrator and visual designer Trajan Jia.

Rémy Martin Limited Edition Gift Collection

Be it for a night of celebration or as a token of appreciation, Rémy Martin’s limited-edition cognacs are a great way to give a toast to a prosperous new year. Coming in three different iterations: Rémy Martin 1738 Accord Royal Harmonia Limited Edition, Rémy Martin XO Harmonia Limited Edition and Rémy Martin VSOP Harmonia Limited Edition, these exceptional liquids are best tasted in a cocktail. Rémy Martin even has a cocktail shaker to complete the special occasion.

Housed in a red coffret or shimmering gold gift box, the cognacs certainly add to the festivities of the widely celebrated Lunar New Year.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Lunar New Year Limited Edition Design

For the Year of the Rabbit, Johnnie Walker collaborates with Shanghai-based designer Angel Chen to design its presentation box and the bottle itself. Featuring the animated rabbit, which represents mercy, elegance and beauty, the animal also signifies longevity in most Asian cultures and is illustrated by the prancing rabbits along different mountainous peaks.

For this limited-edition collection, Chen drew inspiration from the crafts Jonnie Walker Master Blender Emma Walker and her team bring to the distillery. “My work is often inspired by different generations, different genders and cultures coming together to create something fresh and new. These ideals echo the craft of Johnnie Walker, taking different types of whisky from different distilleries, with differing ages of maturation and blending them together perfectly to create a masterpiece – that is something I can relate to.”

Glenfiddich Chinese New Year Gift Packs

Celebrate Chinese New Year and usher in the Year of the Rabbit with Glenfiddich as the whisky maker has unveiled its annual limited edition gift packs. This year’s edition of the iconic Glenfiddich Stag has been designed by Shanghai-based illustrator Yixin Zeng, who is known for his “vibrant, expressive detailed style of painting”. These special gift packs make a good gifting option to commemorate the occasion.

Each pack comes with a single malt Scotch whisky crafted by Malt Master Brian Kinsman, the Reserva Rum Cask 21-Year-Old. The exceptional spirit is finished in Caribbean rum-soaked casks, which gives the whisky a spicy warm and indulgent vanilla and toffee sweetness. Other variants in 12-, 15- and 18-Year-Old are also available in its corresponding design colour and housed in a beautiful gift box

For more alcohol reads, click here.

H. Moser & Cie Celebrates 10 Years of Excellence

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

H. Moser & Cie Celebrates 10 Years of Excellence

January 4, 2023
8:06 pm

Today, H. Moser & Cie employs close to 100 people in offices all around the world, from Switzerland to the Middle East and Hong Kong.

By Ashok Soman

At this year’s Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve (GPHG), H. Moser & Cie picked up the Tourbillon Watch Prize for the Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton, adding to its tally of wins at the prestigious watch industry awards. These include the double wins in 2020 for the Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon H. Moser & Cie x MB&F (Audacity Prize), and the Streamliner Flyback Chronograph Automatic (Chronograph Watch Prize). And these are just the most recent achievements for the Schaffhausen-based watchmaker, which was established in 1828, 40 years before its neighbour, IWC started up. In fact, H. Moser & Cie was making watches some 11 years before the brand that would become Patek Philippe was founded, and close to 50 years before Audemars Piguet got its start. Despite this, it may surprise you to learn that in 2012, the firm was staring down the barrel of bankruptcy.

Many storied names in watchmaking have faced this fate, despite more than a hundred years of know-how and capacity. H. Moser & Cie seemed to have it all in 2012. It boasted a fully integrated manufacture that could not only draw upon its close to 200 years of creating fine timepieces, but also something few others could do: the ability to produce its own regulating organs and balance springs, via its sister company, Precision Engineering AG. Such assets are indeed very rare, but the firm was nevertheless in bad shape, and had no obvious saviour.

Fortunately, MELB Holding, the independent Swiss family group owned by the Meylan family knew a winner when it saw one. This is likely to be because the family itself was steeped in the watchmaking trade — the Meylans are distantly related to watchmaking legend Charles-Henri Meylan, who was active in Le Brassus at the same time as Jules Audemars and Edouard Piguet. At the helm of MELB, Georges-Henri Meylan was famous in his own right, as the retired CEO of Audemars Piguet, where he built many lasting relationships in the watchmaking trade, including in Asia, which we will come back to.

After doing what the company calls “emergency due diligence,” MELB Holding agreed to rescue H. Moser & Cie, becoming its majority shareholder in 2012. What followed was not simply a change in direction, rather something altogether more subtle yet engaging. George-Henri’s son Edouard took the reins of H. Moser & Cie as CEO, supported by his brother Bertrand, and leaned into innovation and disruption to create a future for the independent watchmaking firm. Crucially, the new leadership was not interested in radically changing the watches, by embracing the emerging sports watch trend, or really by jumping on any sort of bandwagon.

“The idea was to draw on what had already been done well — and there were lots of good things — and to further improve this by adding a bit of our own personality, i.e. by respecting the past but incorporating a contemporary and occasionally irreverent edge,” Edouard noted in the press release announcing the 10th anniversary of the Meylan family’s rejuvenation of H. Moser & Cie.

Instead of being trendy, H. Moser & Cie actually gained traction for starting trends, being by turns loudly caustic (the Swiss Mad Watch and the Moser Nature Watch) and quietly revolutionary (by removing the brand name, and indeed all the markers, from the dial). A favourite of ours is the Swiss Alp Watch Concept Black in 2019, where even the hands are dispensed with, although there is a tourbillon at 6 o’clock; the brand makes a habit of releasing at least one such concept piece that speaks to who H. Moser & Cie is every year, since 2016. Perhaps the most significant watch that signalled what H. Moser & Cie would become was the Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Funky Blue, with its startling gradient electric blue dial. If nothing else, H. Moser & Cie was renowned for its perpetual calendars, so this 2015 watch combined something everyone already knew about the brand, but now with a twist. The watch also had a raw leather strap, foreshadowing the Swiss Mad Watch and other irreverent concept timepieces.

As wild and polarising as some of those moves and watches were, they had the intended effect of getting H. Moser & Cie some much needed attention. The brand finally had a presence befitting its fine watchmaking skills, and collectors took notice. In the last 10 years, H. Moser & Cie has reported a fivefold increase in production, accompanied by an even more impressive eightfold increase in turnover. Today, its profitability is significantly higher than the average in the Swiss watchmaking sector, and it is riding the second wave of interest in independent watchmaking. Arguably, H. Moser & Cie was at least partially responsible for creating the wave.

These waves of interest in independent watchmaking had long been crashing into Singapore’s shores, where collectors are always on the lookout for rare gems. Although H. Moser & Cie only began its relationship with regional distributor Pacific Time Pte Ltd in 2019, the watches were already known in Singapore. The Meylan family, on the other hand, had a much longer relationship with the distributor, or rather the family behind it. In his days at Audemars Piguet, George-Henri Meylan had established a relationship with Anthony Lim, the man who started what would become Cortina Holdings in Singapore, as Edouard told collectors and press at H. Moser & Cie events in Singapore and KL, Malaysia. Pacific Time is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cortina Holdings Group, which also owns Cortina Watch and now Sincere Watch.

Watchmaking is all about connections, and relationships that last generations. This is as true of the watches as it is of the people behind the watches, and behind the scenes. Today, H. Moser & Cie employs close to 100 people in offices all around the world, from Switzerland to the Middle East and Hong Kong. Its core watchmaking competencies remain as strong as ever, and it tends to partner with the best in the trade to deliver superlative watches to collectors. The brand is thus set to continue on its audaciously classical journey, with a dash of acerbic wit. No doubt you will encounter H. Moser & Cie in the metaverse before too long…

Whisky Journey 2022 Attended by Over 2,000 People

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Whisky Journey 2022 Attended by Over 2,000 People

December 29, 2022
1:10 pm

Close to 3,000 10ml of tasters were sold at the two-day event at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre

By Joseph Low

Held on 2 and 3 December 2022 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Whisky Journey welcomed over 2,400 participants. Besides local whisky lovers, overseas visitors from the UK, US, Vietnam and Malaysia also attended the two-day event. In total, a revenue of more than S$180,000 was earned from the 3,974 transactions that took place during the whisky showcase. Additionally, close to 3,000 10ml of tasters were sold.

Some of the highlights include a showcase of the oldest Japanese whisky, masterclasses hosted by owners and representatives of the distilleries, the launch of exclusive whisky expressions from various brands and more than 100 different expressions served to participants.

A gathering point for whisky connoisseurs and those just starting out on their own whisky journey, the exhibition-style event was a fun, educational, inclusive and affordable way to deepen one’s knowledge of various whiskies and their origins. Also, for distilleries, this was an opportunity to connect with the growing local whisky scene, foster new bonds and create sales.

Andrew Law, head of sales and marketing at Remy Cointreau shares: “Remy Cointreau’s thrilled to have partnered with Whisky Journey as an exceptional partner to bring alive the experience of our single malt scotch whisky portfolio brands: Bruichladdich, Port Charlotte, and Octomore, to engage our clientele and trade partners. We look forward to furthering successes in showcasing our single malt scotch whisky’s brand philosophy and craftsmanship in collaboration with Whisky Journey!”

Many of the participants also shared that the event “provides one of the best ways to taste all the whiskies”. Of course, they all had a great time at the event where they got to learn more about the different expressions that are available to those residing in Singapore as well as lesser known brands.

With such a successful run this year, participants are already looking forward to the next one in 2023.

We take a look at the big winners of the two-day event

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

The Winners of the 2022 Asian Academy Creative Awards

December 23, 2022
1:33 am

With our nation sweeping up eight awards at the 2022 Asian Academy Creative Awards — it ranges from “Changi Airport: Battling The Pandemic” which won Best Branded Programme or Series to Mark Lee winning Best Comedy Performance for “It’s All Your Fault!” — here, the complete winners list across both nights.

Night One

Best Adaptation of an Existing Format — Malaysia
“Star Vs Food Malaysia” by Creative Stew/Discovery/Astro

Best Animated Programme or Series (2D or 3D) — Japan
“Bubble” by Story Inc/WIT Studio/Netflix

Best Branded Programme or Series — Singapore
“Changi Airport: Battling The Pandemic” by The Walt Disney Company SEA, National Geographic

Best Children’s Programme (One-Off/Series) — Taiwan
“Hello, My Name Is Dong-Ping” by Hakka TV

Best Current Affairs Programme or Series — India
“Ganga River From The Skies” by National Geographic India

Best Direction (Non-Fiction) — Singapore
Ziqing/Eve – “Inside Maximum Security – Road To Freedom” by CNA, Mediacorp

Best Documentary Programme (One-Off) — Australia
“Osher Günsberg: A Matter Of Life And Death” by Lune Media/SBS Australia

Best Documentary Series — Singapore
“Open Secrets – The Untouchable Chaebols Of South Korea” by Vice Media Asia Pacific

Best Editing — Singapore
Melanie Foo Campbell – “Supermodelme: Revolution” S6 by Refinery Media

Best Factual Presenter — India
Esha Paul – “Inside The Opioid Crisis Gripping This Himalayan State” by Vice Media Asia Pacific, Vice World News

Best Infotainment Programme — India
“My Daughter Joined A Cult” by Discovery Communications India

Best Lifestyle Programme — India
“Say Yes To The Dress India” by Discovery Communications India

Best Natural History or Wildlife Programme — Japan
“Iriomote – The Fabric Of Life” by NHK / Doclights Gmbh / NDR

Best News Programme — Singapore
“Newsday” by BBC World News

Best News or Current Affairs Presenter/Anchor — Singapore
Lin Xueling – “In Conversation, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong” by CNA, Mediacorp

Best Original Programme by a Streamer/OTT — Korea
“Yumi’s Cells” (S1 & S2) by Studio Dragon, MerryCow, Studio N

Best Preschool Programme — Australia
“Bluey” – Rain, Fairytale , by Ludo Production, BBC/ABC Kids

Best Promo or Trailer — Indonesia
Disney+ Hotstar Indonesia: “Together As One” by The Walt Disney Company SEA

Best Short Form Content — Malaysia
Disney+ Hotstar Malaysia: “Stories That Bring Us Together” by The Walt Disney Company SEA

Best Single News Story/Report — Australia
“Unfinished Symphony” by 7PM Company, The Project, Network 10

Best Sound — Singapore
“This Land Is Mine” by Weiyu Films, Mediacorp, Suite Sound

Best Voice Artist — Japan
Yukiko Fujimura – Nameraka by Bilingual Voice Japan

Night Two

Best Actor in a Leading Role — Korea
Jung Hae-in – “D.P.” by Climax Studio, Netflix

Best Actor in a Supporting Role — Taiwan
Wu Kang-Ren – “Light The Night” by Bossdom by Netflix

Best Actress in a Leading Role — Philippines
Jodi Chrissie Sta. Maria – “The Broken Marriage Vow” by ABS-CBN

Best Actress in a Supporting Role — Taiwan
Liou Yiin-Shang – “Still Me” by Tzu Chi Culture And Communication Foundation

Best Cinematography — India
Shreya Dube – “Thar” by Anil Kapoor Film Company/Netflix

Best Comedy Performance — Singapore
Mark Lee – “It’s All Your Fault!” by Wawa Pictures/Ministry Of Communications & Information (Singapore)

Best Comedy Program —New Zealand
“Kid Sister” by Greenstone TV, TVNZ, NZ On Air

Best Direction (Fiction) — India
Basil Joseph – “Minnal Murali” by Weekend Blockbusters, Netflix

Best Drama Series — Korea
“Twenty Five Twenty One” by Studio Dragon, Hwa&Dam Pictures, CJ ENM

Best Entertainment Host — Hong Kong SAR
Johnson Lee – “Family Feud” by Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB)

Best Feature Film — Japan
“Asakusa Kid” by Nikkatsu & Django Film, Netflix

Best General Entertainment, Game or Quiz Program — Korea
“My Boyfriend Is Better” by CJ ENM

Best Music or Dance Program – Australia
“Eurovision – Australia Decides – Gold Coast 2022” by Blink TV Production, SBS Australia, and Tourism & Events Queensland

Best Non Scripted Entertainment — Australia
“Eurovision – Australia Decides – Gold Coast 2022” by Blink TV Production, SBS Australia, and Tourism & Events Queensland

Best Screenplay — Korea
Noh Hee-Kyung – “Our Blues” by Studio Dragon, GTIST, & CJ ENM

Best Single Drama/Telemovie/Anthology Episode — India
“Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam” (“Ode to Femme Fatales”) by Zee Zindagi, Zee5, & Zee Entertainment

Best Theme Song/Title Theme — Thailand
“Who Am I” By Bright, Win, Dew, Nani For F4 Thailand: Boys Over Flowers by GMMTV

Best Visual/Special FX in TV / Feature Films — Australia
“Elvis” , Method Studios, Warner Bros.

Marcelo Martin Burgos: Sculpture of the Golden Age

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Marcelo Martin Burgos: Sculpture of the Golden Age

December 22, 2022
12:44 pm

“My aim is to elicit images and feelings that will take those who observe my art back to the most creative, awe-inspiring, and frightening time of their lives: the golden age of childhood.”

By LUXUO

Argentinian artist Marcelo Martin Burgos now lives and works between Buenos Aires and Madrid. He has been practising sculpture for some thirty years, while also pursuing a career as a filmmaker. He finds his equilibrium through this alternation between immobility and movement, solitary work and teamwork, gesture and speech.

His artistic world is deeply rooted in childhood. The artist spent his early years in an orphanage where his father was the director and he was in contact with the children who lived there, who were also his friends. He remembers: “The place was on a hill, surrounded by trees but far from idyllic; it was eternally overcast by a heavy atmosphere of sadness. I’ve always remembered those kids with admiration. The way they would seek refuge in fantasy. The same way I found solace in art when just a few years later I lost my own father. Those children were the most resilient and brave of all the people I have met in my life.” Marcelo Martin Burgos continues to be fascinated by the imagination of children, which “helps them to make sense of the enormous, mysterious and overwhelming world they are thrown into.”

To rekindle the power of that imagination and to recapture the joy and freedom he felt in creating as a child, the artist has spent years shedding the academic baggage he received as an art student. A path which is not as easy as it seems: “it takes years to “unlearn” an education in the Fine Arts. The hand and the eyes are trained in a certain tradition, we are taught art history, we learn to imitate. Even worse, we are taught art is a struggle, and that to be a good artist means to cut an ear or drink oneself to death. I spent years trying to be a “serious” artist, I grew tired and bored. Until one day I stumbled upon some chalk drawings a kid had made on the floor of a park, and it struck me. Like a Proust’s Madelaine moment, I went back to the years I would draw just to amuse myself or to escape a reality that was too difficult to comprehend for a child. I had a voice, but for years I was trained to ignore it, to dismiss it.”

His sculptures are crafted in bronze, a noble metal that he values for its versatility and above all, for its golden, mirror-like appearance once it is polished. Long before the invention of glass, the Etruscans were already using polished bronze to create mirrors. The reflective aspect of his creations is a way of inviting his viewers into his works and transforming his sculptures into sensory cues that trigger a memory. “My aim is to elicit images and feelings that will take those who observe my art back to the most creative, awe-inspiring, and frightening time of their lives: the golden age of childhood.”

This “golden age” is interpreted literally in his sculptures, which resemble statuettes in gold, a material traditionally associated with spirituality and the sacred. This dimension is particularly evident in his latest series, entitled “Monsters.” Although they evoke the spontaneity of children’s drawings, the pieces in this series are also reminiscent of the votive statues of ancient civilisations, which were meant to provide protection and comfort. The art of Marcelo Martin Burgos draws from multiple sources: manga and pop culture, dinosaurs, Toltec and African art. This power of evocation is precisely what gives his sculptures their capacity to resonate in everyone who views them: the sculptures become the means of escape into the memories, the dreams and the meanderings of our inner world.

Marcelo Martin Burgos does not worry about the common critique expressed by viewers of contemporary art: “A kid could have done that”. “I would like them to know that that is the greatest compliment that you could ever give an artist, especially me”.

Marcelo Martin Burgos is represented by Artistics contemporary art gallery in Paris.

Winners celebrate at Property Guru Asia Property Awards Grand Final

Lifestyle / yachtstyle2020

Winners celebrate at PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final

December 15, 2022
1:51 pm

Leading lights from the region’s leading property developers assembled in Bangkok for the 17th PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final.

Winners at the 17th Annual PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final

New World and companies from Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore were the big winners at the 17th Annual PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final, presented by Kohler and supported by Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®. Also known as the finale of the 2022 PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards series, the Grand Final was presented in 48 categories at The Athenee Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Bangkok.

New World Development Company Limited garnered the award of Best Developer (Asia), representing China (Hong Kong and Macau). Along with the design practice Lead8, the company also received the Best Mega Mixed Use Development (Asia) award for 11 SKIES.

New World won Best Developer (Asia)

Representing Mainland China, Lead8 additionally won the Best Retail Architectural Design (Asia) award for Shougang Park Urban Weaving District. Benoy Limited won Best Mixed Use Architectural Design (Asia) for CRL MixC Qianhai in another regional win for Mainland China.

The Philippines garnered seven regional wins, led by the Best Industrial Developer (Asia) title for Aboitiz InfraCapital Economic Estates and Best Lifestyle Developer (Asia) title for Global-Estate Resorts, Inc. (GERI). Aboitiz InfraCapital Economic Estates also won the honours of Best Industrial Development (Asia) and Best Green Development (Asia) for LIMA Estate.

AppleOne Mactan, Inc. also won Best Branded Residential Development (Asia) for The Residences at Sheraton Cebu Mactan Resort while Cebu Landmasters, Inc. won Best Hospitality Architectural Design (Asia) for Sofitel Cebu City. Arquitectonica was honoured with the Best Office Architectural Design (Asia) award for Mega Tower.

One Bangkok won Best Landmark Mixed Use Development (Asia)

Thailand also gained seven regional wins, including the Best Landmark Mixed Use Development (Asia) award for One Bangkok by Frasers Property Holdings (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (FPHT).

Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited won both the Best Condo Development (Asia) and Best Health and Wellness Development (Asia) awards for The Aspen Tree at The Forestias. PMT Property Co., Ltd. earned the titles of Best Condo Interior Design (Asia) and Best Condo Landscape Architectural Design (Asia) for 125 Sathorn.

Lake Legend Bangna-Suvarnabhumi by Hongkong Land and Property Perfect PCL was named Best Waterfront Housing/Landed Development (Asia) while Jaytiya 2 Private Pool Villas Residence by Jaytiya Property Co., Ltd. won Best Housing/Landed Landscape Architectural Design (Asia).

Singapore scored six regional wins at the Grand Final. GuocoLand was named Best Luxury Developer (Asia) and Best Sustainable Developer (Asia) while UOL Group Limited was named Best Hospitality Developer (Asia). UOL Group Limited also won Best Hotel Development (Asia) for Pan Pacific Orchard.

GuocoLand won Best Luxury Developer (Asia)

Park Nova by Shun Tak Holdings gained the Best Condo Architectural Design (Asia) title while Artyzen Singapore by Artyzen Hospitality Group won Best Hospitality Interior Design (Asia).

Indonesia was also represented with six regional wins that include the Best Township Development (Asia) award for Kota Baru Parahyangan by PT. Belaputera Intiland and Best Township Masterplan Design (Asia) award for PIK2 Sedayu Indo City by Agung Sedayu Group & Salim Group.

Autograph Tower at Thamrin Nine Complex by PT Putragaya Wahana, a member of Galeon Group, won Best Office Development (Asia) while LRT City Jatibening by KSO PT Adhi Commuter Properti Tbk. & PT Urban Jakarta Propertindo Tbk. won Best Connectivity Condo Development (Asia). Metland Cibitung by PT Fajarputera Dinasti, a subsidiary of PT Metropolitan Land Tbk., won Best Connectivity Housing/Landed Development (Asia) while LOGOS Cikarang Logistics Park by LOGOS Indonesia was named Best Green Industrial Development (Asia).

Australia scored five regional wins, including the Best Boutique Developer (Asia) title for Spacious Group. SPG Land won both the Best Smart Building Development (Asia) and Best Integrated Work From Home Development (Asia) titles for Paradiso Place. Dare Property Group won Best Eco Friendly Commercial Development (Asia) for Zero Gipps and Mayrin Group won Best Housing/Landed Architectural Design (Asia) for The Archwood Residences.

Sycamore won Best Housing/Landed Development (Asia)

Vietnam scored four regional wins, including the Best Mixed Use Developer (Asia) title for Keppel Land. Sycamore by CapitaLand Development (Vietnam) won the Best Housing/Landed Development (Asia) and Best Eco Friendly Housing/Landed Development (Asia) awards. Artisan Park by Gamuda Land was named Best Retail Development (Asia).

From Greater Niseko, Andaru Collection Niseko by Blue Waves Group clinched both Best Completed Housing/Landed Development (Asia) and Best Housing/Landed Interior Design (Asia) awards. HakuVillas by H2 Group won the Best Completed Condo Development (Asia) award.

Cambodia and Malaysia each earned two regional wins. The Best Breakthrough Developer (Asia) award went to Kambujaya Development Co., Ltd, with the Best Waterfront Condo Development (Asia) title going to Vue Aston by The Peninsula Capital Co., Ltd. KL Wellness City by KL Wellness City Sdn Bhd was named Best Mixed Use Development (Asia), with Infinity8 Reserve JBCC by Infinity Group winning Best Co-Working Space (Asia).

KL Wellness City won Best Mixed Use Development (Asia)

India was also represented at the Grand Final with Embassy REIT winning Best Commercial Landscape Architectural Design (Asia) for Embassy TechVillage – Central Garden.

Candra Ciputra, CEO of Ciputra Group and president director of PT Ciputra Development Tbk, received the PropertyGuru Icon Award. Ciputra, previously named the Indonesia Real Estate Personality of the Year in 2015, received the award for a lifetime of real estate achievements covering developments in more than 40 cities across the archipelago.

The regional winners at the Grand Final were selected from the elite pool of country winners from PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards’ series of celebrations this year in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Greater Niseko (Japan), India, and Australia.

Hari V Krishnan, CEO and managing director of PropertyGuru Group, said: “The Awards remain among our widest-reaching enterprise solutions, having expanded over the years to represent some of the world’s most dynamic property markets from Southeast Asia to Australia. With these award-winning developers and designers as benchmarks, we hope to guide property seekers towards finding, financing and owning the right properties. In this, the 17th edition of the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final, we elevate not only the region’s dream homes but also its finest, most sustainable live-work-play developments, workspaces, retail hubs, hotels, resorts, and industrial parks, among others, to an international platform. Whether you’re seeking, selling or building property, we will see you home.”

Jules Kay, general manager of PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards and Events, said: “The winners of the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final aptly represent the diversity, progress, and resilience of their respective property markets. With projects ranging from boutique residential developments to vast integrated districts, these award-winning developments offer an impressive snapshot of what the Best in Asia looks like. Whether celebrated onstage at our gala events, or presented to the world online, these awardees shine bright as the Gold Standard of Asian real estate, keeping true to our vision of building the region’s Property Trust Platform. To all the winners announced at our regional Grand Final—we celebrate your success. Congratulations.”

The latest edition of the Grand Final marked the full return of the black-tie gala dinner and awards presentation, following a successful virtual gala edition in 2021. The 2022 Grand Final was streamed live on AsiaPropertyAwards.com as well as the programme’s official Facebook and YouTube channels.

The list of winners at the Grand Final was selected by an independent jury consisting of head judges of participating markets in the Awards: Thien Duong, chairperson of the Grand Final and general director, Group GSA (Vietnam); Amit Khanna, managing director, Phoenix Advisers (India); Bill Barnett, founder and managing director, C9 Hotelworks (Greater Niseko); Cyndy Tan Jarabata, president of TAJARA Leisure & Hospitality Group Inc. (Philippines); Dato’ Sr. Lau Wai Seang, president, Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia (RISM): 2017-2018 (Malaysia); Kristin Thorsteins, head of partnership growth for APAC at IWG PLC (Singapore); Lui Violanti, regional manager for Western Australia, Inhabit Group (Australia); Paul Tse, president, board of directors, Macao Association of Building Contractors and Developers (Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau); Sorn Seap, executive vice president, Cambodian Valuers and Estate Agents Association (Cambodia); Suphin Mechuchep, chairperson, JLL Thailand (Thailand); and Vivin Harsanto, senior director and head of advisory, JLL Indonesia (Indonesia).

HLB, the leading international accounting and advisory ﬁrm, upheld fairness, transparency and credibility throughout all points of the selection process, under the leadership of Paul Ashburn, HLB International Real Estate Group.

Since it was established in Thailand in 2005, the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards programme has expanded over the years to 18 property markets. Through its series of in-person and virtual gala celebrations, the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards programme has provided an international platform for excellent real estate developers, architects, and interior designers across Asia Pacific. The programme therefore connects awardees to a wide pool of investors, consumers, and agents, as well as the diaspora, throughout the region and beyond.

Organised by PropertyGuru Group (NYSE: PGRU), the 17th PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final is supported by platinum sponsor Kohler; gold sponsor Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®; official portal partner PropertyGuru; official channel partner History; official magazine Property Report by PropertyGuru; official PR partner Artemis Associates; media partners BusinessWorld, Construction & Property, d+a Magazine, Daily FT, Deluxe Magazine, Discover Pattaya, Esquire PH, Hot Magazine, Housing.com, Kompas, Kopiandpropetry.com, Luxuo, Manila Bulletin, Mingtiandi, Palace, Pattaya Trader, Penang Property Talk, People Asia Magazine, PhilStar PropertyReport PH, Powderlife, Real Estate News PH, Real Living, Rem, Robb Report, Southeast Asia Globe, Suara Indonesia, The Grid, The Hindu, The Manila Times, Think of Living, Top 10 of Malaysia, Vietnam Heritage, WhenInManila.com, Yacht Style, and Your Investment Property; official ESG partner Baan Dek Foundation; official charity partner Liter of Light; supporting partners IFC – Building Resilience Index, IFC – Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies, and REHDA Institute; supporting associations EuroCham Cambodia, Global Design Awards Lab, Green Building Consulting & Engineering, Niseko Tourism, Singapore Estate Agents Association, and Singapore Green Building Council; and official supervisor HLB.
www.asiapropertyawards.com

LIST OF REGIONAL AND COUNTRY WINNERS
17th PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final

DEVELOPER AWARDS

Best Developer (Asia)
Agung Sedayu Group — Indonesia
Auriton Group — Australia
New World Development Company Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau (REGIONAL WINNER)
Prince Real Estate Group — Cambodia
Robinsons Land — Philippines
UOL Group Limited — Singapore

Best Luxury Developer (Asia)
GuocoLand — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)
SonKim Land Corporation — Vietnam

Best Industrial Developer (Asia)
Aboitiz InfraCapital Economic Estates — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)
PT LOGOS SEA Indonesia — Indonesia

Best Mixed Use Developer (Asia)
GuocoLand — Singapore
Keppel Land — Vietnam (REGIONAL WINNER)
Megaworld Corporation — Philippines
Prince Real Estate Group — Cambodia

Best Hospitality Developer (Asia)
Megaworld Corporation — Philippines
UOL Group Limited — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Lifestyle Developer (Asia)
Aurum Land (Private) Limited — Singapore
Casagrand Builder Pvt. Ltd. — India
Global-Estate Resorts,Inc. (GERI) — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Sustainable Developer (Asia)
GuocoLand — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)
PT. Bumi Serpong Damai — Indonesia
PT LOGOS SEA Indonesia — Indonesia

Best Boutique Developer (Asia)
Aurum Land (Private) Limited — Singapore
PT. Bumi Parama Wisesa (NavaPark) Hongkong Land & Sinar Mas Land Joint Venture — Indonesia
Spacious Group — Australia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Breakthrough Developer (Asia)
Kambujaya Development Co., Ltd — Cambodia (REGIONAL WINNER)

DEVELOPMENT AWARDS

Best Township Development (Asia)
Bridgetowne Destination Estate by Robinsons Land — Philippines
Correctio by PT. Jababeka Tbk — Indonesia
Kota Baru Parahyangan by PT. Belaputera Intiland — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)
Meyhomes Capital Phu Quoc by Tan A Dai Thanh – Meyland — Vietnam

Best Mega Mixed Use Development (Asia)
11 SKIES by Lead8 & New World Development Company Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Landmark Mixed Use Development (Asia)
One Bangkok by Frasers Property Holdings (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (FPHT) — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Mixed Use Development (Asia)
Baker Circle by Henderson Land Development Company Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau

Balfour Place by Thirdi Group — Australia
Embassy Manyata Front Parcel Development by Embassy REIT — India
Heartland 66 by Hang Lung Properties — Mainland China
KL Wellness City by KL Wellness City Sdn Bhd — Malaysia (REGIONAL WINNER)
Melbourne Square by OSK Property — Australia
Prince International Plaza by Prince Real Estate Group — Cambodia
Thamrin Nine Complex by PT Putragaya Wahana, a member of Galeon Group — Indonesia

Best Industrial Development (Asia)
FoodFab @ Mandai by Mandai 7 JV Pte Ltd — Singapore
GIIC @ Kota Deltamas by Sinar Mas Land & Sojitz Corporation — Indonesia
LIMA Estate by Aboitiz InfraCapital Economic Estates — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Hotel Development (Asia)
Pan Pacific Orchard by UOL Group Limited — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)
Park Hyatt Niseko Hanazono and Hanazono Resort Niseko by Nihon Harmony Resorts KK and PCPD — Greater Niseko

Best Retail Development (Asia)
Artisan Park by Gamuda Land — Vietnam (REGIONAL WINNER)
Batavia PIK by Agung Sedayu Group & Salim Group, curated by Amantara — Indonesia

Best Office Development (Asia)
888 Lai Chi Kok Road (NCB Innovation Centre) by New World Development Company Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau
Autograph Tower at Thamrin Nine Complex by PT Putragaya Wahana, a member of Galeon Group — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)
Cloud Land, Hangzhou by Greentown China Holdings Limited — Mainland China
Frasers Tower by Frasers Property Singapore — Singapore
Hudson & Ganges Office Towers, Embassy TechZone by Embassy REIT — India
Knowledge Hub @Digital Hub by Sinar Mas Land — Indonesia
One Bangkok Office Tower 4 by Frasers Property Holdings (Thailand) Co., Ltd. (FPHT) — Thailand

Best Branded Residential Development (Asia)
The Residences at Sheraton Cebu Mactan Resort by AppleOne Mactan, Inc. — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Condo Development (Asia)
Forbes Residences, Applecross by Mustera Property Group Ltd — Australia
Hinode Hills by Niseko Village — Greater Niseko
Kincang Egrets Waves 3.0 Residential by LYCS Architecture — Mainland China
Le Parc at Thamrin Nine Complex by PT Putragaya Wahana, a member of Galeon Group — Indonesia
Meyer Mansion by GuocoLand — Singapore
One Innovale by Henderson Land Development Company Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau
Parc3 by Eupe Corporation Berhad — Malaysia
Piramal Aranya by Piramal Realty — India
The Aspen Tree at The Forestias by Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)
The Seasons Residences by Sunshine Fort North Bonifacio Realty Development Corporation — Philippines
Vue Aston by The Peninsula Capital Co., Ltd. — Cambodia

Best Waterfront Condo Development (Asia)
Costa Mira Beachtown Mactan by Cebu Landmasters, Inc. — Philippines
Lee Nam Road 66 by Logan Group Company Limited & KWG Group Holdings — China – Hong Kong and Macau
Meyer Mansion by GuocoLand — Singapore
Paradiso Place by SPG Land — Australia
Sunteck Beach Residences (SBR) by Sunteck Realty Limited — India
Vue Aston by The Peninsula Capital Co., Ltd. — Cambodia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Connectivity Condo Development (Asia)
LRT City Jatibening by KSO PT Adhi Commuter Properti Tbk. & PT Urban Jakarta Propertindo Tbk. — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Completed Condo Development (Asia)
HakuVillas by H2 Group — Greater Niseko (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Health and Wellness Development (Asia)
Forbes Estates Lipa by Robinsons Land — Philippines
Mark Moran Warrawee by Mark Moran Group — Australia
The Aspen Tree at The Forestias by Magnolia Quality Development Corporation Limited — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Smart Building Development (Asia)
Paradiso Place by SPG Land — Australia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Housing/Landed Development (Asia)
Belgravia Ace by Fairview Developments Pte Ltd (a unit of Tong Eng Group) — Singapore
Enchanté Résidence @BSD City by Sinar Mas Land — Indonesia
Guangzhou Nansha Amber Living by Zhuhai Huafa Properties Co., Ltd. — Mainland China
Sycamore by CapitaLand Development (Vietnam) — Vietnam (REGIONAL WINNER)
The Archwood Residences by Mayrin Group — Australia

Best Waterfront Housing/Landed Development (Asia)
Lake Legend Bangna-Suvarnabhumi by Hongkong Land and Property Perfect PCL — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)
The Residences III at The Glades, Putra Heights by Sime Darby Property — Malaysia

Best Connectivity Housing/Landed Development (Asia)
Metland Cibitung by PT Fajarputera Dinasti a subsidiary of PT Metropolitan Land Tbk. — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Completed Housing/Landed Development (Asia)
Andaru Collection Niseko by Blue Waves Group — Greater Niseko (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Integrated Work From Home Development (Asia)
Paradiso Place by SPG Land — Australia (REGIONAL WINNER)
Pisonia Ville by UDA Holdings Berhad — Malaysia

Best Green Development (Asia)
LIMA Estate by Aboitiz InfraCapital Economic Estates — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Green Industrial Development (Asia)
LOGOS Cikarang Logistics Park by LOGOS Indonesia — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Eco Friendly Housing/Landed Development (Asia)
Sycamore by CapitaLand Development (Vietnam) — Vietnam (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Eco Friendly Commercial Development (Asia)
Site of the Future – Acienda Silang by Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corporation — Philippines
Zero Gipps by Dare Property Group — Australia (REGIONAL WINNER)

DESIGN AWARDS

Best Township Masterplan Design (Asia)
Bridgetowne Destination Estate by Robinsons Land — Philippines
PIK2 Sedayu Indo City by Agung Sedayu Group & Salim Group — Indonesia (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Mixed Use Architectural Design (Asia)
11 SKIES by Lead8 — China – Hong Kong and Macau
CRL MixC Qianhai by Benoy Limited — Mainland China (REGIONAL WINNER)
Yoho Treasure Island Resorts World Hotel, Macau by Huarchi Global Design Corporation Ltd & Treasure Island Entertainment Company Ltd — China – Hong Kong and Macau

Best Condo Architectural Design (Asia)
AMO Residence by UOL Group Limited, Singapore Land Group Limited, Kheng Leong Company — Singapore
Meyer Mansion by GuocoLand — Singapore
One East @ Damansara by CK East Group — Malaysia
Paradiso Place by SPG Land — Australia
Park Nova by Shun Tak Holdings — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)
Railway Leisure Town by HZS Design (Shanghai) Ltd. — Mainland China
Reference Sathorn – Wongwianyai by SC Asset — Thailand
The Commodore by JBE Holdings Pte Ltd — Singapore
The East Village at DGT by Cebu Landmasters, Inc. — Philippines
Waterfall Heights, Patong Bay (Phuket) by PropertyStore Thailand Co., Ltd. — Thailand

Best Housing/Landed Architectural Design (Asia)
Andaru Collection Niseko by Blue Waves Group — Greater Niseko
Lake Legend Bangna-Suvarnabhumi by Hongkong Land and Property Perfect PCL — Thailand
Mazenta Residence by PT Cipta Harmoni Lestari — Indonesia
Seri Austin Heights by Aksi Sepakat Sdn Bhd — Malaysia
The Archwood Residences by Mayrin Group — Australia (REGIONAL WINNER)
The Valley by Botanica Luxury Villas — Thailand
Venue ID Motorway Rama 9 by SC Asset — Thailand

Best Hospitality Architectural Design (Asia)
Artyzen Singapore by Artyzen Hospitality Group — Singapore
Shiguchi by Kookan — Greater Niseko
Sofitel Cebu City by Cebu Landmasters, Inc. — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Retail Architectural Design (Asia)
Pantjoran PIK by Agung Sedayu Group & Salim Group, curated by Amantara — Indonesia
Shougang Park Urban Weaving District by Lead8 — Mainland China (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Office Architectural Design (Asia)
Embassy Oxygen, Tower-1 by Embassy REIT — India
Mega Tower by Arquitectonica — Philippines (REGIONAL WINNER)
One Bedford Place by Lofter Group Limited — China – Hong Kong and Macau

Best Condo Interior Design (Asia)
125 Sathorn by PMT Property Co., Ltd. — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)
Liv @ MB by Bukit Sembawang Estates Limited — Singapore
Orchard Sophia by Orchard Sophia Pte Ltd — Singapore
Paradiso Place by SPG Land — Australia
Perfect Ten by Property Enterprises Development (Singapore) Pte Ltd — Singapore
The Commodore by JBE Holdings Pte Ltd — Singapore
The Residences at Sheraton Cebu Mactan Resort by AppleOne Mactan, Inc. — Philippines

Best Housing/Landed Interior Design (Asia)
Andaru Collection Niseko by Blue Waves Group — Greater Niseko (REGIONAL WINNER)
Kambujaya Residences by Kambujaya Development Co., Ltd — Cambodia
Mazenta Residence by PT Cipta Harmoni Lestari — Indonesia
The Archwood Residences by Mayrin Group — Australia

Best Hospitality Interior Design (Asia)
Artyzen Singapore by Artyzen Hospitality Group — Singapore (REGIONAL WINNER)
Sheraton Cebu Mactan Resort by AppleOne Mactan, Inc. — Philippines
Shiguchi by Kookan — Greater Niseko

Best Condo Landscape Architectural Design (Asia)
125 Sathorn by PMT Property Co., Ltd. — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)
AMO Residence by UOL Group Limited, Singapore Land Group Limited, Kheng Leong Company — Singapore
Park Nova by Shun Tak Holdings — Singapore
Waterfall Heights, Patong Bay (Phuket) by PropertyStore Thailand Co., Ltd. — Thailand

Best Housing/Landed Landscape Architectural Design (Asia)
Jaytiya 2 Private Pool Villas Residence by Jaytiya Property Co., Ltd. — Thailand (REGIONAL WINNER)
Meysenses Lucia Bay Bai Lu by Tan A Dai Thanh – Meyland — Vietnam

Best Commercial Landscape Architectural Design (Asia)
Embassy TechVillage – Central Garden by Embassy REIT — India (REGIONAL WINNER)

Best Co-Working Space (Asia)
Infinity8 Reserve JBCC by Infinity Group — Malaysia (REGIONAL WINNER)
work.able Exxa-Zeta Center by Robinsons Land — Philippines

PUBLISHER’S CHOICE

PropertyGuru Icon Award
WINNER: Candra Ciputra
CEO, Ciputra Group
President Director, PT Ciputra Development Tbk

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Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe On the Brand Being a Trend Maker

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Akila Leverages Data and Technology to Improve Companies’ ESG Efforts

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The Ultimate Maldives Island Experience For Those In Search of True Balance of Mind, Body and Soul

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Cirrus Aircraft is Every Aviator’s Dream

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Ring in Chinese New Year with These Alcohol Picks

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H. Moser & Cie Celebrates 10 Years of Excellence

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Whisky Journey 2022 Attended by Over 2,000 People

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The Winners of the 2022 Asian Academy Creative Awards

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Marcelo Martin Burgos: Sculpture of the Golden Age

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