Children: Anna (dob 01.05.2000), a graduate of Leeds Conservatoire, is a musician and composer in the UK. Andrew (dob 14.10.1996), is an academic and orientalist at the Sorbonne and UNIL: his research speciality is, so he tells me, Shi’a Elites in 9th and 10th century Baghdad, with periods of research and intensive Arab language study in Amman and Cairo. Both have dual British Suisse nationality. Anna is bilingual French and English: Andrew has French, English, German and Arabic.
After IMI I decided to stay in Switzerland, for I’d been a resident since 1981, and pretty much liked everything I knew about the Confédération Helvétique, so I went to work for Société Générale de Surveillance SA in the Oil & Gas Division in the Geneva Head Office before relocating to Singapore then Hong Kong as the division’s Area Manager Asia-Pacific, then subsequently back to Geneva as a VP in a staff development role. I had spent seven years in the oilfield business in South-East Asia before IMI, and was happy enough to go back, but such had been the frenzy of Singapore’s development during the period I soon got lost looking for old haunts, including my 1970s colonial house, which, hélas, had long since been bull-dozed.
In the 1990s I went to India and set up Guardian Insurance Services Pvt Ltd in Bangalore for Guardian Royal Exchange plc, the UK parent. My wife Isabelle and I came back to Switzerland when AXA acquired GRE and Andrew was born. I acquired Swiss citizenship in 2002 and switched to BSI Inspectorate (Suisse) SA, a British Standards Institution subsidiary, initially as Baltic Regional Manager and then as Managing Director in Lausanne. For much of the time I was tackling cultural issues inimical to business probity, notably in Moscow and other Eastern European affiliates.
Thereafter I was an independent consultant until I finally retired at the end of 2023. Isabelle and I were most amicably divorced in 2006. Since 2009 I have lived with my partner Geneviève who is a jurist in Lausanne. I still have my chalet apartment in Château-d’Oex, a legacy of those snowy times of yesteryear.
After a more than honourable period of « fiançailles » Geneviève and I are to be married in Pully Lausanne on the 26th of June 2024.
I regretfully gave up downhill skiing in 2021, after being kitted out with a plastic and titanium knee. In 2015 my various pilot’s licences, Commercial Multi-Engine, Instrument and Seaplane ratings also lapsed after just under 1’000 hours in my logbook. I had been a qualified pilot since September 1966 in the UK, and a flying instructor in Singapore before coming to IMI. Then came another sad blow and reminder of mortality in December 2023, when Pablo, my dear lifelong friend and Contessa 28 sailing partner, passed away in York UK.
The rearview mirror
Chemin de Conches 4 was the locus of a perfect life interlude for me. I skied every weekend during the MBA, and have fine memories of hilarious outings in Leysin, Champéry, Avoriaz, Crans Montana etc with, inter alia, Chris Stevens, Norm, Shah, Eric Smith, Bye, David Walker, Lasse Fritz, Osadetz and Bob Patterson. The national soirées were memorable, as was the odyssey that was South Korea. Then there were African sundowners at Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club during the SGS consulting in Kenya, with Jonathan, Greg and the late Phil Kelly.
And I do seem to remember, partially at least, “multiples soirées bien arrosées” at that place called the Corner Bar.
I’m not really a Whats-up habitué or a dedicated “hail fellow well met” guy, but it’s been a boon to catch up with IMI personalities from time to time over the past decades – the barbie in Sydney, flying Chris Stevens and Raj Shah round Hong Kong, a well-oiled ski with jazz-man Walker in Zermatt, and of course I see Parisian artist Millner frequently and Fredy and Johan periodically. I appreciate receiving lively emails from Eric Smith and that indomitable Katimba coach his excellency Antonia Augusto Santos.
Time passes, we get older, we get greyer, we lose some of our number, memories fade and “recollections may vary”, but those memories I do retain much please me and do me nothing but good, thanks to the company I was privileged to have in Geneva from 1983 to 1984.
Coordinates
Chemin des Oiseaux 6, 1185 Mont-sur-Rolle, Switzerland
Updated 2024-06-10