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At a time when the NBA was gaining popularity nationwide, Newsweek said that the New York Knicks “may be the greatest pro

basketball team of all time,” regularly filling Madison Square Garden with “19,500 screaming, frenzied fans.” The emergence of the Knicks, “with their fluid, devastating offense and imaginative defense,” coincided with a rise in popularity for the National Basketball Association, which had 14 teams at the time. Today, the NBA has 30 teams, and in the 2018–2019 season, the Knicks were the team with the highest annual revenue at $472 million.

1973

When Bette Midler performed as the Divine Miss M, Newsweek wrote, “What galvanized the audience’s tumultuous cheers and laughter was Bette’s ability to reveal an unmistakable vulnerability.” Throughout her career, Midler has won four Golden Globes, three Grammys, three Primetime Emmys and a Tony.

1969

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The Archives

1982

Newsweek reported, “In a major blow to Ronald Reagan’s proposed $1.6 trillion defense buildup, the House last week refused to approve funds for the controversial MX missile,” signaling a shift in priority in the face of deficits. The 1983 defense budget allocated $213.6 billion for military spending; in 2020, President Trump signed a $738 billion defense bill.

Chuken kigyo: The secret of Japan’s manufacturing successThough some of Japan’s best-known manufacturers have lost ground to regional rivals in recent years, it is the country’s chuken kigyo – strong, medium-sized companies – that continue to fly the national flag through their dedication to maintaining traditional monozukuri values.

While it may be massive Japanese corporations such as Sony, Sharp and Panasonic that took over the world of consumer products in the 1990s – and indeed remain iconic brands synonymous with the fa-mous ‘Made in Japan’ trademark and its reputation for high-quality – today chuken kigyo is undeniably a more relevant symbol of Japan’s great manufacturing and techno-logical prowess.

Whereas some of the coun-try’s largest manufacturers have in recent years lost market share to regional rivals that endeavor to replicate the processes of Japanese monozukuri, Japan’s smaller, lesser-known manufacturing firms – who make up the so called chuken kigyo sector – continue to dominate niches upon which global industry depends.

A combination of ‘mono’, mean-ing thing, and ‘zukuri’, meaning the act of making, monozukuri is often translated as ‘craftsmanship’ in English. But monozukuri not only focuses on crafting the highest quality products, it also stands for sustainability and working in harmony with the surrounding environment. The philosophy is synonymous with Japan’s army of SME manufacturers, who are often hailed as the “hidden cham-pions” of the nation’s reputed in-dustrial sector.

Hideaki Imaie, President and CEO of SAnSHO MEC – a com-pany which specializes in parts and assembly for the Japanese electronics and automotive indus-tries – can testify to this.

“The most distinguished Japa-nese industry is automotive, sym-bolizing Japan as a country by its production of high-quality goods through distinguished processes,” he says.

“But when we’re talking about this industry, we are not only talk-ing about the end-product car itself, but the parts required to manufacture that car. These parts

also have to meet the high-quality standards. Toyota and nissan pro-duce around 100 million cars each year with one tenth of those being produced by Japanese-based man-ufacturers. We play a significant part in this process.”

In recent years, Japan has faced stiff competition from regional competitors that try to replicate the nation’s manufacturing stan-dards. And while these competi-tors may surpass Japan in terms of quantity and price, they often fail to capture the true essence of monozukuri. The SAnSHO MEC

president says that while it is inevi-table that Japan’s parts manufac-turers have needed to expand to these territories and lower costs to compete, the quality of the Japa-nese product goes unmatched.

“Parts manufacturers in Japan are trying to take their automated production and sell those cheaper parts globally in order to compete with cheaper labor production from countries such as China, Viet-nam and Taiwan. The difference is that we create these products to satisfy the demand for high-quality and reliable products,” he says.

Hideaki Imaie, President & CEO, SAnSHO MEC CO., LTD.

www.sansho-mec.co.jp

Such a strategy – one increas-ingly followed by Japan’s chuken kigyo – has enabled companies like SAnSHO MEC to grow their inter-national base of satisfied clients amid stiff competition, helping yet further propel the ‘Made in Japan’ brand to become world-wide ambassadors of the nation’s renowned monozukuri values.

The chemical industry – Japan’s second largest manufacturing seg-ment behind transport machinery – is perhaps not an area of the economy synonymous with envi-ronmental friendliness. But that is a perception Moriroku Holdings is determined to change.

“When you think of the stereo-typical image that many have of chemicals, it is most likely not a positive one. However, what we value the most is the environment,” says Takashi Kurita, president of Moriroku Holdings. “There is a concern with ocean pollution, bio-plastics in particular. Since

Moriroku: Committed to sustainable, innovative chemical solutions The 350-year old business is a “true solutions provider” for the automotive segment.

our responsibility is to not nega-tively impact ocean pollution, we use lots of raw material for our plastics. We not only recycle but we always find a way to reuse any scraps or waste.”

As such, the president says the company is incorporating envi-ronmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into its management practices with a view to improving environmental performance and ensure it contributes to sustain-ability in every country it operates.

From humble beginnings, Moriroku can trace its roots all the way back to 1663, when it traded in indigo and manure. Fast forward to today, and Moriroku is a Group of companies that manu-factures, exports and sells chemi-cals and synthetic resin products for international markets, with automotive businesses being its main customers.

“In 2017, we became a 350-year-old listed company which was a huge milestone for us. In the same year, we started working with Volkswagen in Mex-ico. This was our first time work-ing with a European company, but since our listing we have been expanding to work with other European companies. We are now

starting our second model with Volkswagen at its Mexican plant.”

Specializing in the manufacture of injection parts for both the in-terior and exterior of automobiles, Mr. Kurita says the company’s main strength is that it is a true solutions provider.

“From a technical point of view, we offer R&D to our clients, we don’t simply ask for an opportu-nity or follow their lead exactly. We focus on specializing in this innovative technical development to make effective solution propos-als for our customers.”

www.moriroku.co.jp/english/

Takashi Kurita, President, Moriroku Holdings

The Japanese way: Quality in great quantity keeps regional competitors at bay

Based on this strategy, Sumiron has decided to keep its operations in Japan, where quality can be controlled, but take advantage of market growth and demand for its products by exporting overseas.

“At the moment we are export-ing one of our hottest products, a hermetic packing system for used diapers, the CareFort,” says Mr. Haruyama. “The Carefort has been developed based on the concept of securely containing the sources of odor rather than deodorization. Critically, the product also locks in the bacteria and viruses emanat-ing from used diapers, reducing the risk of secondary infection.

“We currently have high de-mand, especially by European and developed countries, as our product has proved very effec-tive in dealing with the control of infection, particularly in hospitals. This has enabled us to study the European market while exporting our product.”

Designing these high added-value products, through the Japanese way, is always hard to copy for Chinese manufacturers or those in other Asian countries.” www.sumiron.com/english/

By continuing to innovate high added-value products, Japanese manufacturers will stay on top, says the president of Sumiron. For Japanese SMEs like Sumiron, a manufacturing firm who spe-cializes in protective plastic films for the construction, automotive, electronics and healthcare indus-tries, being able to produce ex-ceptionally high-quality products isn’t the only thing that matters. Pursuing quality in great quanti-ties is how Sumiron and Japan’s chuken kigyo remain competitive with companies from China, Korea and Taiwan, who are fast improv-ing at replicating the practices of monozukuri. Being able to produce the finest products at the greatest of volumes is what continues to set Japanese manufacturers apart.

“Only Japanese companies can provide great quantities, control-ling the high quality of the product,” says Mr. Eiji Haruyama, president and CEO of Sumiron. “To survive and grow in the future, however, we’ll have to continue designing and innovating high-quality prod-ucts, as well as high-tech products.

“Designing these high added-value products, through the Japanese way, is always hard to copy for manufacturers in other Asian countries”

Eiji Haruyama, President & CEO, Sumiron

factures supplementary products that are derived from glass fiber, as well as diversifying to other materials such as carbon fiber.

“Our strength is that our com-pany is limitless in adapting,” says

Mr. Asai. “We used to produce for industrial applications, but we have expanded into con-struction materials, home ap-pliances, and automotive parts. There are so many applications of our products; they can be used anywhere.”

“We are exploring industries we haven’t tackled yet, like tech-nology,” explains the president. “Our products have already been introduced in so many in-dustries, so we need to identify places where we haven’t yet had any reach. And although it may be hard to find an industry we haven’t touched, this is a good thing for us as it demonstrates our flexibility in tough times like the pandemic.”

Considering Covid-19, Nihon Glass Fiber – which in recent years expanded its operations to North America, China and India to take advantage of international demand – has experienced an important learning curve that will serve it well for the future. “It really taught us that we cannot expect anything, or plan for everything. But we did learn that investing in R&D allows for adaptation and riding through tough waves like this.”

Strong stuff: The glass fi ber fi rm proving as resilient and versatile as its productsCovid-19 has hit many industries, but one Japanese company specializing in glass fiber materials has found itself on steadier ground thanks to its inherent adaptability.

http://nitigura.co.jp/en

“Our products have already been introduced in so many industries, so we need to identify places where we haven’t yet had any reach”

Takashi Asai, President, Nihon Glass Fiber

Throughout history, people have experimented with glass fibers to make reinforced materials for vari-ous purposes. Indeed, the technique of heating and drawing glass into fine fibers has been known for mil-lennia. However, the use of these fibers for various modern manufacturing ap-plications – thereby unlocking an aston-ishing versatility – is more recent.

“Glass fiber was invented and mass-produced in the US, but Japan soon became the mass producer of it,” explains Takashi Asai, president of Nihon Glass Fiber. “China is the num-ber one maker and consumer now, but the Middle East and South East Asia also produces a great deal.”

The company’s major product is insulation, but it also manu-

damping. Because of these, this fiber is considered to improve performance in the automotive and sporting goods industries. They then engage market-leaders to jointly develop products that didn’t exist before.

“The industries in which our technologies are highly in demand are all set to grow,” says Ms. Sakane. “With increased sensitivi-ty to the environment, lightweight materials are more popular, for example lighter automobiles and airplanes because they save en-ergy. AR and high-tech displays are also in need and, of course, 5G radio wave innovation is greatly desired. We are fortunate that what we produce has been in line with market trends.”

lines and measuring and testing methods, we create all in-house,” she explains. “Keeping the entire R&D and manufacturing process in a black box and maintaining good security over our technolo-gies is our way of ensuring the highest-quality products.”

I.S.T, a so-called “material brand”, specializes in high-func-tioning material R&D. For exam-

ple, I.S.T invented a super fiber which can be used in composites and convertible with aramid and carbon fibers. Besides existing characteristics of super fibers, such as high-temperature resis-tance and high-tensile strength, their super fiber has high UV resistance and high vibration

“In Japan, we know what appears to be a weak area, or even just the slightest inconvenience, can be turned into an advantage”. That, beyond the traditional definition of monozukuri, is what summarizes the Japanese values behind its manufacturing success, believes Toshiko Sakane, CEO of Indus-trial Summit Technology (I.S.T) Corporation.

Ms. Sakane describes her com-pany as “technology thought lead-ers”, in other words, always look-ing ahead to the future, and always willing to take on new research and development to invent materi-als that make products come alive.

“Not only products themselves, production methods, production

I.S.T Corp: Technology Thought LeadersMost businesses attribute ‘innovation’ as a value to varying degrees. For I.S.T Corporation, innovation is not just a pillar of its organizational structure, it is the very foundation upon which the company is built.

“The industries that we are heavily involved in are all set to grow… We have been fortunate that what we produce has been in line with market trends”

Toshiko Sakane, President & CEO, I.S.T Corporation

www.istcorp.jp/en/

good reputation, not only with our customer’s R&D departments but with production and procurement departments too. We believe that earning the trust of all areas of customers’ organizations is the essence of our monozukuri.”

“On top of that, we have launched new products devel-oped by our innovation divi-sion,” explains Mr. Sato. “For instance, we have succeeded in developing numerous products that have precisely controlled magnetic properties and particle sizes, from nano to single micron. Such ferrite powder products are utilized in communication-related electronic components and electromagnetic shields and have many advantages, including higher resistance to acids and alkalis than metal powder.”

Even something as unobvious as powder can be highly innovative and play a huge role in terms of its societal impact, says Mr. Sato.

“We want to develop and pro-vide materials that are useful to society by establishing something unique that does not currently ex-ist, through processes that do not currently exist either.”

Powder power: The surprising versatility of powder productsBesides electrophotographics, innovative powder is made for various useful solutions.

JAPANPowdertech Co., Ltd.

www.powder-tech.co.jp/en/

OVERSEASPowdertech International Corporation

www.powdertech.com/

“We have inherited and further developed powder technology and continue to research and develop new functional materials”

Yuji Sato, President, Powdertech Co., Ltd.

High quality, high durability, and high energy saving are the com-mon characteristics associated with the carrier powders used in the production of state-of-the-art electrophotographic technology. Similarly, these are also the ex-act features of monozukuri – the value for fine craftsmanship made famous by Japan’s manufacturers and their world-leading products.

A Japanese company renowned for its carrier powder production – made for electronic copying ma-chines and printers – and equally a chief proponent of monozukuri, is Powdertech.

“We have been able to respond to constantly changing needs of our customers through our mea-sures to address technological disruptions such as digitalization, colorization, and environmental regulations,” says Yuji Sato, presi-dent of Powdertech.

“This has allowed us to have a large world market share and a

Clockwise from top left: Ferrite carrier (35 um); Fine spherical ferrite; Flake-shaped ferrite;

Magnetic fluid; Oxygen sensor;

and Oxygen absorber

able to be on location,” explains Mr. Horiguchi.

“For clients, we want the Oshika brand to represent ‘a business part-ner who can solve any problems

products like its aqueous polymer isocyanate adhesive to a wider global customer base, while also in-vesting in R&D to develop adhesives like hotmelt for other industries.

“We are also expanding Japanese high-quality adhesives internation-ally by promoting our ‘world-quality adhesives for wood’ to partners we can work with in the same sector, who, upon utilizing the license, can adapt the same strategy of techni-cal and sales support to any region where we are trying to expand,” Mr. Horiguchi adds.

As a sustainability-minded com-pany, Oshika has also developed a breakthrough adhesive which utilizes a natural material called “lignin”, which it aims to introduce in the future.

And this ethos of combining mono-zukuri (Japanese craftsmanship) and Kaizen (unrivalled Japanese customer service) forms the basis of the company’s brand and success.

“Our job doesn’t end with just selling the adhesives to our clients, we help them in the manufacturing process as well, supporting them on how best to utilize our adhe-sives. We also provide technical training to our clients, and can do so online in the case we are not

Japan’s chuken kigyo take “listening to the customer” to a whole new level. As champions of co-creation, Japanese SMEs’ close collaboration with their clients is often essential to the development of their high-quality products.

“No matter whether we work in Japan or abroad, we make sure that we go to where the clients are in order to establish the right com-munication pathways to provide the most optimal services,” says Kazuhide Horiguchi, president and CEO of Oshika Corporation, a top manufacturer of over 1,000 kinds of wood adhesives and general construction materials tried and trusted by satisfied clients in Japan and across the world.

What’s more, a large number of chuken kigyo like Oshika not only supply their customers with the highest performing products, but also offer training to the customers on how to best utilize those products.

Oshika: The Japanese ethos behind the wood adhesive manufacturer’s global success How the leading wood adhesives and construction materials manufacturer has built one of the industry’s most reputable brands.

www.oshika.co.jp/

“Not being just a mere supplier, conducting our business by working closely with clients is the Oshika brand”

Kazuhide Horiguchi, President & CEO, Oshika Corp.

with technology’. I heard that one of our clients said: ‘If I leave our fac-tory to Oshika, it can be

operating without any worry’. Not being just a mere supplier, conduct-ing our business by working closely with clients is the Oshika brand.”

Having cemented its reputation in Japan as a leader in its field, Os-hika now aims to become a flagship company and expand sales of core

consistent quality and uniformity, with all its metals meeting cus-tomer needs in terms of product appearance, weight and chemical composition.

“Because our R&D starts from meeting our customers to highlight our capabilities, they recognize us as a capable partner. We try to find new aluminum alloys to suit each customer’s specifications and needs,” says Mr. Taniyama.

“In the automobile sector, they are trying to find lighter alterna-tives to steel. However, existing aluminum alloys are sometimes not strong enough. We have been experimenting with different alu-minum alloys and we now have a variety of aluminum alloys that will be able to handle the demands of the automobile industry.”

When it comes to Asahi Sei-ren’s business model, president Yoshifumi Taniyama likes to use arteries and veins as an analogy to describe the two sides of the busi-ness. “The veins side would be our scrap procurement, bring-ing in the used alu-minum for recycling, and the artery side is that which follows monozukuri: meeting customer requirements and adding convenient solutions for our cus-tomers. We emphasize

Aluminum may be the most abun-dant metal in the world but there are only a very select number of companies capable of turning scrap aluminum metals into high-quality alloys that meet the stan-dards of demanding customers like Japanese automotive companies.

One such company is Asahi Seiren, which, thanks to its un-rivalled technological know-how and R&D capabilities, produces monozukuri-quality aluminum al-loys for clients in a wide range of industries, including automotive, where demand for lighter and higher-performing components bodes well for this innovative Osaka-based firm. www.asahiseiren.com

Asahi Seiren: Turning recycled aluminum into monozukuri quality alloys A leading aluminum recycling company, Asahi Seiren draws on cutting-edge technology to develop high-quality, light-weight alloys that continue to meet the latest needs of industry.

on quality, and even for chemi-cal composition, our standard is stricter than the Japanese indus-trial standards.”

Having achieved a consistent supply

of sustainable raw materials, Asahi Sei-ren utilizes cutting-edge technologies to develop products of

Yoshifumi Taniyama, President & CEO, Asahi Seiren Co., Ltd.

The parts manufacturers representing the true strength of Japan’s car industryThe success of Japan’s large automakers is intrinsically linked with the innovative Japanese SMEs who supply them with parts and components.

While Toyota, Honda and Nissan are major brands that represent the strength and reputation of the Japanese automobile industry worldwide, the true strength of the industry lies with the hundreds of smaller companies that sup-ply the parts and components for these big car makers.

Their logos won’t be found on the top of the hood or on the front of the steering wheel. But look inside the door panel, the steering wheel or gearbox, or at the hun-dreds of small pieces that make up the engine and you will find examples of the high-quality and high-performing craftsmanship developed by these Japanese parts manufacturers.

“If you drive a car such as a Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford or Volkswagen, you probably use our products without realizing,” says Osamu Inoue, president of Sumito-mo Electric, a global leader in the manufacture of wire harnesses. “Our production of wire harnesses is essential for automobile manu-facturers to produce their cars.”

Another parts manufacture in-tegral to the automotive produc-tion chain is Nippon Piston Ring (NPR), which manufactures piston rings, valve seat inserts and other engine parts for major automobile makers in Japan and overseas. “Our strengths can be compared to the big parts manufacturers and we have been working on products utilizing tribology, which is one of our core technologies,” explains NPR president, Teruo Takahashi.

Tribology is the science and en-gineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. And in the case of NPR, it focuses on developing high-quality components that reduce friction and wear of machine and engine parts – something which Mr. Takahashi refers to as “integral architecture”.

“By integral architecture, we mean technology to optimize parts

and material for products through subtly adjusting them mutually, thus realizing high quality and function,” he explains.

“We continue to strive to pro-duce products which meet func-tional requirements for engine weight reduction, wear resistance, high thermal conductivity and high toughness, etc. at a com-petitive price. For example, our DLC (Diamond-like Carbon) coat-ing technology reduces friction between cylinder and piston rings and contributes to fuel efficiency.”

However, with the shift to elec-tronic vehicles, there will come a

time when such components will no longer be required. Although while Mr. Takahashi believes that internal combustion and hybrid engine-powered cars will be around for a while yet, NPR has already began diversifying into new areas in order to ensure its survival. Drawing on its rich ex-pertise in material and coating technologies, NPR aims to develop high-precision products for the medical industry, while also mov-ing into the manufacture of other automotive parts.

“There are three key principles for the ‘Next NPR 2030’ plan,” he

www.npr.co.jp/english/

3-2-8, Kishinooka-Cho, Kishiwada city,

Osaka, 596-0817 Japan

Within the Japanese manufacturing industry, beyond the parts-making firms serving the electronics and automotive sectors, perhaps no-where is the influence of chuken kigyo felt more strongly than in the agricultural equipment segment.

“Companies like ours are the ones supporting the Japanese economy,” says Yukisei Hirono, president and CEO of Hirono Iron Works, which specializes in farm machinery for a growing global market. “SMEs are behind some of the world’s largest companies be-cause often we are market leaders in niche fields. We are constantly improving ourselves and produc-ing high-quality products, which makes small firms unique. In this way, Japan’s chuken kigyo can help solve issues in developing countries, where demand for agri-cultural equipment is very strong.”

Ready for harvest: Japan manufacturers ready to meet world’s agricultural needs

cultural-working population, and the environmental problems that are attracting attention globally.”

Hirono Iron Works, therefore, is extremely well placed to react to these needs with innova-tive solutions, says Mr. Hirono, “by taking advantage of our

technical capabilities and superior responsiveness, which are based on a combination of expertise

and know-how”.“We are capa-

ble of integrated production that

combines various processing methods to

produce a wide variety of products in small quantities, so that we can provide parts that are suitable for the re-gion wherever the customer needs them.”

With global requirements for agricultural equipment set to grow strongly in the coming decades, driven by demand in the developing world and the need for more sustainable farming practices internationally, Japan’s SME manufacturers are primed to take advantage.

The global agriculture equipment market is expected to increase by 9% by 2025, driven by economic growth in countries such as Brazil and the southeast Asian region.

“The agricultural machinery market will continue to grow,” Mr. Hirono says. “This is because agriculture is essential to human life. While the agricultural ma-chinery market contin-ues to grow, in the fu-ture, it will be necessary to develop machinery that responds to the shortage of the agri-

https://hirono-iwc.co.jp

Yukisei Hirono, President, Hirono Iron

Works Co., Ltd.

says, “to be the ‘last man stand-ing’ in the engine field, to set up new businesses utilizing our core technologies, and to seek partners through M&A, capital alliances or technology partnership to help us achieve our goals.”

Teruo Takahashi, President, NPR Co., Ltd.

It’s hard to imagine manufacturing innovations in cosmetics packaging being employed in the electronics and automotive industries. But that is exactly the case thanks to Yo-shida, a globally renowned supplier of high-quality and environmentally sustainable cosmetics packaging, such as bottles, tubes, jars, and compacts, as well as industry-leading decoration technologies.

World leader in plastic innovationWith over 70 years of experience in the industry, Yoshida has con-tinued to develop state-of-the-art technologies to fulfill the needs of the world’s top cosmetic brands.

YOSHIDA: Innovations in plastic for brands seeking higher

And many of these technologies have been used beyond cosmetics in the production of other ubiquitous consumer products.

For example, the company’s in-mold decoration technology ‘YK Print’ – which was first developed in 1973 to allow for limitless de-signs and customization in the decoration of compact cases – was used on the Sony Walkman and

TV remote controls. As Yoshida’s production has evolved, the design possibilities have increased, and the company looks forward to expand-ing the boundaries and usage of this decoration technology.

Innovation Spotlight: Crystal Clear Seamless Glass Insert MoldingBut Yoshida’s innovation has not stopped there. “We were the first

to commercialize Crystal Clear Seamless Glass Insert Molding, where glass and plastic are pre-cisely joined to form a decorated, seamless single body,” explains president, Yuzo Yoshida. “The fea-tures of this duo-molded prod-uct result in high performance strength while keeping the original characteristics and luxury clarity of glass.”

With this innovative manufac-turing method having been widely adopted by smartphone compa-nies, Yoshida now wants to expand its utilization to the production of light electricals and home appli-ances, as well as electronic ve-hicles – as the company continues to bring world-leading innovation beyond beauty.

http://www.yoshida-cw.co.jp/en/&

The monozukuri behind materials science innovationsMonozukuri is found at the core of all of Japan’s industries, including in the field of materials science, where Japanese com-panies continue to develop innovative new polymers and plastics based on high-quality and environmental sustainability.

Combining the traditional values of monozukuri craftsmanship with the constant pursuit of innovation, Japanese companies involved in material science are developing state-of-the-art technologies and products to respond to the latest demands of industry and society.

“Japanese monozukuri has its root in our traditional values of diligence and constant improve-ment. We know that what appears to be a weak area, or even just the slightest inconvenience, can be turned into an advantage. So, we always like to work hard to improve things,” says Ms. Toko Sakane, President of I.S.T Corpora-tion – a global leader in cutting-edge materials for a wide range of industries.

A company deeply committed to R&D and innovation, I.S.T Corp. develops functional polymer mate-rials centering on polyimide resin, which have applications in several areas, such as office automation equipment, textile materials and measuring instruments.

With one-third of its employees working in R&D, I.S.T has devel-oped several innovative materi-als such as IMIDETEX, a super-fiber made of polyimide resin that plays active roles in various fields, including sports clothing for harsh outdoor environments; and TORMED, a transparent polyimide film whose applications include LCD/LED displays, touch panels, solar battery panels, lighting equipment and semiconductors.

Another leader in materials sci-ence, Fuji Seal, meanwhile, com-bines monozukuri manufacturing and large investments in R&D to develop the latest recyclable plas-tic packaging materials for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG).

Fuji Seal’s innovations, which have been adopted by some of the world’s biggest FMCG brands, include RecShrink, a shrink sleeve label containing a special film and washable ink that can be recycled together with the plastic bottle (significantly improving the recy-cling process); and Fuji Pouch, one of the company’s spouted pouch packaging solutions that offer re-usability, portability, and extended shelf life – as well as increased en-

vironmental sustainability thanks to significant material reduction.

“We aim to grow together with our customers by introducing our unique monozukuri technologies,” says president, Shigeko Okazaki. “Being a packaging company, along the changes of packaging, we have changed to meet the needs of the market and we will continue to do so in the future.”

Like Fuji Seal, as a manufacturer of plastics, Yoshida’s monozukuriis very much focused on sustain-ability. For over 70 years, Yoshida has been a top-choice supplier of plastic packaging for major brands in the beauty industry. But as some of its innovate products have in-

creasingly crossed over beyond beauty to other industries, such as electronics and automotive, Yo-shida aims to become a globally recognized leader in the field of materials science. For example, its

Yuzo Yoshida, President, Yoshida Industries Co., Ltd.

proprietary Crystal Clear Seamless Glass Insert Molding technology has been adopted by smartphone manufacturers and has potential uses in domestic electronics and electronic vehicles.

“We believe the only way for-ward is with responsible manu-facturing processes and develop-ing innovation together with our partners,” says president, Yuzo Yoshida. “We lead in sustainability and are world renowned as the fin-est supplier of prestige packaging and new innovations for cosmetics. We have many technologies that go beyond beauty and we look forward to bringing them to the world marketplace.”

ink can be washed off from the label during the process and the label together with the bottle can be recycled without peeling off the label,” says Ms. Okazaki. “This product is used by Nestle USA and certified by the Association of Plas-tic Recyclers.”

Foundation ProspectusFuji Seal was established to con-tribute to the development of the economy and industry across the world through “the promotion of the important functional and display roles of product packaging”, while also nurturing human resources and supporting R&D. With this in mind,

customer is going to be, and what kind of specifications those final customers are looking for. This is the essence of our monozukuri,” says president and CEO, Shigeko Okazaki.

As a 120-year-old company, Fuji Seal has witnessed all the major shifts that have impacted the pack-aging industry, from the switch from large barrels to individually packaged goods in the 1950s, and the rise of the supermarket in 1970s and 80s, right through to to-day, where environmental concerns and green consumer demands have forced packaging firms to rethink their products.

Playing a vital role in the switch to more environmentally friendly packaging, Fuji Seal has developed a wide range of industry-leading so-lutions that have been employed by some of the world’s biggest brands. One of the company’s biggest suc-cess stories is RecShrink, which can greatly improve the process of recycling.

“Until today, in order to recycle a plastic bottle, you needed to peel off the label to recycle the plas-tic bottle. With our solution, the

When it comes to fast-moving goods found on supermarket shelves, in many ways the packag-ing is as important as the product itself. The packaging is the first thing that attracts the consumer’s attention, with the design, shape, look and feel of the packaging form-ing their first impressions of the product and the company brand. When the product has been con-sumed, the packaging will be last thing that remains – meaning the correct disposal is of the utmost importance, particularly today in our green-conscious world.

As a globally leading manufac-turer of packaging and related ma-chinery, Fuji Seal not only employs monozukuri (Japanese craftsman-ship) to provide the best solutions for customers seeking the most appealing and high-performing packaging on the market, but the company has also put itself at the forefront of the development of the latest recyclable plastic materials technology.

“For our customers’ products, our packaging design appeals to consumers on store shelves. What I mean by this is that we are con-stantly thinking deeply about the total value, what kind of product we are going to create, who the final

Each day with renewed commitment, we create new value through packaging

“We aim to grow together with our customers by introducing our unique monozukuri technologies… we have changed to meet the needs of the market and we will continue to do so in the future”

Shigeko Okazaki, President & CEO, Fuji Seal International Inc.

the company began its scholarship program in 2006 to provide schol-arships to university and graduate students in Japan, including inter-nationals students.

“What we conveyed through this program is that we live to develop ourselves, we support others to help them succeed,” explains Ms. Okazaki. “To help students to grow, we have learned, discussed and con-sidered together the importance of packaging, its functionality in relation to protection, storage and safety, as well as its display role and as a medium conveying a product’s appeal to consumers.”

In 2019, Fuji also started a research grant program that pro-vides funds to re-searchers studying packaging-related themes, such as the development of new packaging ma-terials, initiatives to address plastic pol-lution and the use of packaging for mar-keting purposes.

www.fujiseal.com/en/www.fujiseal.com/en/www.fujiseal.com/en/

Fuji Seal Foundation Award at ASPaC 2019

The monozukuri behind materials science innovations

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Damage DoneA woman looks at the destruction on November 28, just days

after the passage of Hurricane Iota. Hurricanes Eta and Iota, which hit Nicaragua on November 3 and 16 respectively, left at least 200 dead and as many missing. The back-to-back storms

smashed homes, uprooted trees and swamped roads during their destructive advance across several Central American countries.

PERSONAL FINANCEPeriscope

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that deadline was extended to January 31. An additional two-month reprieve, extending deferral through March of 2021, is reportedly part of the bipar-tisan $908 billion stimulus package being discussed in Congress, says Bet-sy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors. But given the financial crunch these payments represent for tens of millions of stu-dent borrowers, don’t wait on a deal coming through before taking steps to ensure your loan payments won’t be a burden for you in 2021.

Fortunately, you have options. If you’re on a standard 10-year repay-ment plan, you can switch to one that bases the amount you owe each month on how much you currently earn, limiting payments to 10 or 15 percent of your income after living expenses. In some cases, that can be

additional weeks, depending on the state—to workers who’ve exhausted regular unemployment insurance during periods of high unemploy-ment. If you’re eligible, your state should notify you or you can contact your state agency to enquire directly (the “Unemployment Benefits Finder” tool at Careeronestop.org has info on each state program). The Century Foundation estimates that about one in four Americans currently on un-employment, or roughly 2.9 million people, will receive help from these state-level programs.

Other steps worth taking: Consider enrolling in assistance programs of-fered by credit card or other lenders as well as utility companies to defer payments until you’re back on your feet. Look into other federal programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, for food assistance, or the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Pro-gram (LIHEAP) for help with energy bills (find out what’s available at 211.org). And through Feeding America, you can search its network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries to find your local service.

You might also be able to bring in some extra income with a freelance gig. Find opportunities at SideHusl.com, SideHustleNation.com and sim-ilar sites. Bear in mind, though, that if you’re still eligible for unemployment, earning any kind of paycheck will re-duce your benefits commensurately.

Lend Yourself a HandDeceMber is your last chance under the CARES Act to make a penalty-free withdrawal from your 401(k), IRA or any other retirement savings plan—and be able to post-pone some of the taxes due or repay the money at no cost if your financial situation improves soon. That would

essentially turn the funds you take out into an interest-free loan.

“Early withdrawals from your retire-ment accounts should generally be avoided,” says Stillwater, Minnesota fi-nancial planner Jesse Sell. But if you’re struggling financially because you or a family member has lost a job or tak-en a pay cut during the pandemic, the planner adds, “Taking advantage of the waived penalty before it expires at the end of 2020 can make sense.”

Here’s how the program works: People who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who have lost income be-cause of the pandemic can withdraw up to $100,000 from their retirement account without paying the 10 percent penalty that savers younger than 59 1/2 are usually hit with. You’ll still owe income taxes on any money you pull out, but you can spread the payments over a three-year period to make them more affordable.

If you don’t end up needing the full amount you withdraw, you can return the unused money anytime within the three-year period and file an amended return to get a refund of any taxes you paid on that amount. If your finances improve, you can also repay some or all of the money you withdraw over the next three years, get a refund on the taxes paid, and the amount won’t count toward your annual contribu-tion limit for the account.

Lower Your Student Loan Paymentsnearly 60 percent of borrowers say they’ll find it difficult to come up with the money they owe when payments on federal student loans resume early next year, according to a recent Pew survey.

Payments, which have been sus-pended since March due to the pan-demic, were scheduled to pick up again on January 1 but in early December E

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Three in four Americans are worried about their ability to pay their bills and loans; one in four worry that someone in their household will soon lose income.

EXPIRATION DATE Key provisions for pandemic financial relief under the CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last March, are due to end this month.

as low as $0. The tradeoff: You’ll make payments over a longer period of time, up to 25 years, and shell out more in interest over the life of the loan. If you’re already on an income-based payment plan but you’ve lost your job or seen your income drop during the pandemic, re-enter your financial in-formation at studentaid.gov to see if you qualify for lower payments or an economic hardship deferment.

A bonus to postponing your loans now if you owe less than $10,000: You may not have to pay back what you borrowed at all. President-elect Joe Biden has said he supports immediate-ly forgiving $10,000 of an economical-ly distressed borrower’s student debt, which would be huge as nearly a third of people with outstanding education debt owe less than $10,000, according to the College Board.

Get Ahead of Your Landlordyet another econoMic relief pro-vision due to expire at year end: an eviction moratorium that prevented renters who earn less than $99,000 a year, or $198,000 for couples, from being kicked out if they were behind on payments. Plus, renters will be on the hook for the outstanding back payments as well as late fees.

If you’re not able to resume pay-ments or pay back rent, try working out a deal with your landlord or leasing agency—asking for, say, a reduced payment schedule initially or the option to spread the next six month’s payments out over a year. If that doesn’t work, your state may be able to help. A few, like California and New Jersey, have extended protections into early next year. Some states and cities also have expanded financial as-sistance programs. The National Low Income Housing Coalition maintains a list of them that you can filter by state to find help.

You can reach out to a tenant’s or-ganization in your area or nonprofits like JustShelter.org that can help you understand your rights, deal with the eviction and, hopefully, remain in your home.

If you need immediate shelter, check the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s database of housing organizations in each state that could help.

Use It or Lose Itif you stasheD Money in a flexible Spending Account, or FSA, this year to help pay out-of-pocket healthcare expenses and still have money in the account, it’s time to go on a spending spree. That’s because funds held in an FSA—$2,750 is the annual limit—typ-ically must be used by year end if you don’t want to lose them. Wageworks, which administers such plans, says about 8 percent of its FSA partici-pants forfeit an average of $172 a year.

Since many Americans put off doc-tor visits and elective procedures this E

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More than 12 million out-of-work Americans stand to lose federal financial support when extended unemployment benefits expire on December 26.

SAY AH—AND SAVE Already paid your deductible for 2020? See your doctor for needed medical work this month instead of next and pay less out of pocket.

year due to the pandemic, you may have more money at risk than usual. In addition to health insurance de-ductibles and copayments, FSA funds can be used to pay for prescription medications, eyeglasses and contact lenses and medical equipment like crutches and blood sugar test kits. This year, thanks to the CARES Act, you can also tap the account for over-the-counter drugs and medications and menstrual products.

If you won’t be able to use up your account in time, check with your com-pany to see if it offers a grace period, typically up until March 15, to spend the unused funds or allows up to $550 of unused money to be rolled over for use the following year, says Paramus, N.J., financial planner James Shagawat.

Save for the NextHealthcare Emergencya coViD-19 Diagnosis or other medical crisis can deplete your rainy day fund and knock your finances off course. A good option for “just in case” saving that can also cut your

2020 tax bill: a health savings ac-count, available to anyone who has health coverage through a high-de-ductible plan, as almost half of pri-vate workers do.

“We are always telling people to con-tribute to their HSA prior to year end. The triple-tax advantages are too great to pass up—pre-tax contributions, tax-free growth, tax-free distributions for health related needs,” says Boston fi-nancial planner Nick Hofer.

Unlike with an FSA, money stored in an HSA can remain there for as long you like. Contributions reduce your taxable income and then can be invested and grow tax-free, as with a

401(k) or traditional IRA. You won’t owe any taxes on money taken out of the account to pay for qualified med-ical expenses. And, if you’re over age 65, the funds can be tapped for any non-medical reason without incur-ring the 20 percent penalty younger users would, though you’ll still have to pay income tax.

In 2020, you can stash up to $3,550 in the account if you have health coverage for yourself only or up to $7,100 if you have family cover-age. Those over age 55 can put in an additional $1,000.

See Your Doctor, Prontoif you’Ve alreaDy Met your health insurance deductible for 2020—that is, the amount you must spend on healthcare out of pocket before your insurance kicks in—try to schedule any doctor visits or medical services you need in the remaining days of December. And while you’re at it, stock up on any prescription medi-cine you need as well.

That way you’ll only be on the hook for the copay or coinsurance portion of the bill. Once January rolls around, you’ll have to pay the whole bill on your own until you’ve met the de-ductible again. In 2020, the average deductible for single coverage was $1,418 at large companies and $2,295 at smaller employers, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Those facing heavy medical bills this year may also benefit from group-ing their healthcare appointments into a single year. That’s because you can only deduct medical expenses from your taxes if they exceed 7.5 per-cent of your adjusted gross income.

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MONEY TO-DO LIST A little financial maneuvering now can save you a bundle on taxes and healthcare costs and help protect you from the fallout of the pandemic economy.

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Give a Little, Get a Littlethis holiDay season consiDer incorporating a little charitable gift-ing into your annual traditions, if you can afford it. That’s because un-der the CARES Act, you can deduct up to $300 in cash donations from your taxable income, if you give to a qual-ified charity before year end—with-out needing to itemize deductions on your tax return.

That might not seem like a big deal, but since the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, you can only get a tax benefit from donating if you itemize and forgo taking the standard deduction, something only about 13 percent of Amercians actually do.

Postpone Your Takethe irs usually ManDates that anyone who has money saved in an IRA or 401(k)-type retirement plan

must begin withdrawing a certain amount each year once he or she turns 72, or 7/2 for anyone who reached that age before January 1, 2020 of this year. Otherwise, you get hit with a hefty 50 percent tax penalty.

However, the CARES Act does away with this requirement for 2020. This means you can skip taking this year’s annual required minimum distribu-tion, or RMD, leaving the money in-vested to grow tax-deferred for anoth-er year and save yourself the income tax owed on such a payout.

While it might seem like a no-brain-er to pass on your distribution this year, Plymouth, Minnesota financial planner Mike Miller warns that post-poning might not produce the best tax outcome for some people. That’s because passing this year will like-ly mean you’ll need to take a larger distribution in future years and that

extra income could push you into a higher tax bracket. An accountant or financial planner can help you deter-mine whether skipping or taking your RMD is the best move for you.

Make the Most of a Low-Income Yearthe panDeMic has causeD Millions of Americans to lose some money this year, whether through job loss, being forced into early retirement or needing to take a career break to care for a child or an ill loved one. But that dip in income can offer a small silver lining in the form of greater tax savings down the road by switching some of your savings from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.

That’s because your contributions to a traditional IRA are made with money you haven’t been taxed on yet; instead, you pay income tax when you withdraw money from the account. A Roth IRA uses after-tax dollars, so when it comes time to take money out of the account, those distributions are tax free—a boon for retirees on a fixed income. So while you will owe income tax on any money you move to a Roth IRA, if you’re in a lower tax bracket this year than you expect to be in retirement, it can be a huge tax saver down the line. For instance, pay-ing 12 percent on a $20,000 conver-sion now vs. 22 percent in retirement equals $2,000 in tax savings.

Year end is typically the best time to consider this move “because you’ve already earned the majority of your income in the current calendar year and can better ballpark the tax lia-bility,” says Atlanta financial planner Serina Shyu. F

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Content from The International Investor

- Ghana’s local content powerhouse

ollowing its fi rst major deep water discovery in 2007, Ghana’s oil and gas sector has risen rapidly to become an important pillar of the economy. Oil exports have soared in recent years, hitting $4.57 billion in 2019, against $3.12 billion in 2018. This makes oil the second most important contributor to export revenues after gold.

F

Ghana’s ongoing energy transformation is supported by leading fi rms like RigworldGroup, which has made major strides in growing the local content of Ghana’s petroleum sector. Active for less than a decade, the company has already risen from a niche service provider to a diversifi ed, fully-licensed oil marketing company active in upstream activities, procurement, storage, and distribution. CEO Kofi Amoa-Abban’s story is one of reverse brain drain: he worked abroad before bringing his sought-after skillset back to Ghana, and focused on closing existing gaps in the country’s nascent petroleum sector. “I returned to Ghana from Norway in 2010, and at the time, few local companies and entrepreneurs were willing to participate in the industry. I therefore took it upon myself to invest in Ghanaian talent and capacity development, to boost local content in some of the services in the sector, thereby ensuring an established Ghanaian interest in the oil and gas industry. It was diffi cult in the beginning, but it’s all about being passionate about what you want to achieve,” he recounted.

“Our vision is to become a leading service provider, with a particular focus on the provision of rig services, which is a capitalintensive undertaking. That’s where you need foreign partners who have the technical know-how and fi nancial capacity to truly make an impact,” he explained. Amoa-Abban’s focus on developing the sector for Ghana’s national benefi t has won him a host of awards and accolades, including CEO of the Year (Upstream) at the 2017 Oil and Gas Ghana Awards. With Ghana expected to expand exports from around 200,000 barrels per day to more than 420,000 by 2023, Rigworld is well-positioned to serve as the partner of choice for international oil companies and investors. For Amoa-Abban, Ghana’s stability and high growth potential make for a solid investment case. “Our vision is to become a leading diligence sales and intelligence tools service provider, especially in the provision of rig services, which are capital intensive projects. That’s where you need foreign partners who have the technical know-how and fi nancial capacity to truly make an impact,” he explained.

Kofi Amoa-AbbanCEO – Rigworld Group

Fidelity Bank – Your Partner to Invest in Ghana hana is leading economic growth in West Africa despite facing pandemic challenges, and FitchRatings reports that Ghana is a regional outperformer, supported by robust banking sector growth. According to the Bank of Ghana, the banking sector has been extremely resilient, with asset growth rising by 7.8% year-on-year in Q2 2020 to hit GHS139 billion (US$24 billion). Industry leaders like Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited have played an important role in boosting the sector. Established in 1998 and originally operating as a discount house, Fidelity quickly earned a reputation for its innovative and attractive investment off erings. In 2006 it obtained a universal banking license, and fast became a household name in Ghana. Today it is a tier 1 institution off ering banking, security issuance, advisory, and portfolio investment management services. It also has big growth plans. Managing Director Julian Kingsley Opuni believes Ghana’s strong macroeconomic fundamentals played a critical role in supporting Fidelity’s growth. “Ghana has a very positive growth story. If you look at Ghana compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, it has very strong

potential with infl ation trending down and average growth expectations over the next three years hovering around 5%, even in a challenged global economic environment. In short, Ghana is one of the top investment destinations on the continent,” he explained. Since his appointment as Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited in 2018, the bank continues to be recognized both locally and internationally with awards such as the 2019 Best Bank in Ghana Award at the EMEA Banking Awards in London, the 2019 Best Bank in Ghana

Award at the Banker Awards, also in London, and the Best Bank in Ghana Award at the 2020 Global Finance World’s Best Bank Awards, amongst others. As at the end of June 2020, the Bank recorded a year-on-year increase of 28% in total assets, ending the half-year period with over GHS10 billion (US$1.8 billion) in assets; and further solidifying itself as a leader in the banking sector. The bank is currently the largest privately-owned indigenous bank in Ghana. In addition to its strong fi nancial performance, Fidelity is seeking new partnerships with fi ntech companies that are active in payments, money transfers, and digital lending. According to Mr. Opuni, this will keep the bank on a strong growth path, both domestically and abroad. “In a place like Ghana, there are still a lot of untouched opportunities. Fidelity’s strategy is to leverage its expertise in certain notable growth sectors and partner with investors to seize these opportunities. We are focused on key sectors including agriculture and infrastructure, where we plan to be market leaders. We follow where we see the growth.”

Julian Kingsley Opuni MD – Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited

G

Bamson Group Investing in the future

Although the Covid-19 pandemic has put a dent in near-term plans, Ghana’s tourism sector is poised to undergo major long-term growth. The government’s 15-year tourism plan projects total annual visitors will rise eightfold over the next seven years, with revenues set to hit $8.3 billion in 2027.

amson Group, a leading domestic conglomerate, will play a key role in supporting hospitality and construction growth with its diversifi ed portfolio of hotel, paint, aluminum, and window manufacturing businesses. Founder and managing director Kwame Ofosu Bamfo built his company from scratch after working with his father in a paint shop during the early 1980s. He founded Bamson Company Ltd in 1983, became the accredited representative of Dutch multinational AkzoNobel Car Refi nishes BV in 1985, and began importing and distributing Sikkens car paints nationwide. His paint business has been booming, even in recent months. “Surprisingly, we’ve grown despite the pandemic. We will do about 10% more revenue in 2020 compared to 2019. We are leading the industry, so now we’re taking steps to remain at the top. The house paints and domestic paints business is growing very fast, more so than car paints. In domestic paints, we’ve established painting contracts and we are also expanding our online sales, which is working very well. So we haven’t witnessed a decline in sales, we’re sustaining,” he explained. Bamson Company has been the sole distributor and representative for AkzoNobel Sikkens, as well as the UK’s Crown Paints, for 35 years. It is the market leader in Ghana’s paint industry, with seven branches and 39 distributors active across the country. “Sikkens car paints have a 90% market share in Ghana, and this doesn’t come by

chance. When I started, I was advised to open a training workshop in order to train the car paint sprayers for the end user to ensure the perfect fi nal product. So I built a training center at my head offi ce at Sikkens, and today I have trained over 10,000 sprayers nationwide,” he said. But Bamfo’s interests extend well beyond paint, and today he is the sole owner and operator of Bamson Group, established after Bamfo diversifi ed his business interests into the construction sector, through aluminum door and window manufacturer Glostal Aluminium Systems, as well as the tourism sector through Alisa Hotels. Bamson Group employs 600 people, and also operates training centers in Accra and Kumasi off ering free technical courses for clients. Bamson Company now accounts for 30% of his total business, compared to Alisa’s 55%. Bamfo explained that he wanted to expand his business after successfully growing his paint business, and so built the fi rst Hotel Alisa in 1999, a 14-room facility. Five years later he added another 100 rooms, eventually expanding the business with new 100-room and 150-room projects. Today Alisa is both setting the standard for excellence in Ghanaian hospitality and embodies the largest accommodation provider in the country, with three hotels – Alisa Hotel Labone and Alisa Hotel North Ridge off ering 281 keys and 14 conference rooms, and the new Alisa Hotel Tema which will off er 50 additional rooms and four conference rooms to the company’s portfolio.

Alisa hotel in Tema is scheduled to open in the fi rst quarter of 2021. Its strategic location near Tema Port, one of the main gateways to West Africa, is a major competitive advantage, cementing Bamson Group’s position as a leader in Ghana’s hospitality sector. As one of the most stable and strong economies in Africa, Bamfo sees enormous potential in Ghana and its hospitality sector. As such, he has extended the invitation to international investors seeking to capitalize on new opportunities. “I’d like to invite investors to join me in the hotel industry. Our hotel business includes over $65 million of assets, and before the pandemic we were consistently at between 65% and 70% occupancy. We off er the best and most suitable locations in the center of Accra, near ministries and Jubilee House. And the country itself is the most civilized mission in West Africa: there’s no confl ict at all, the government and judiciary are good, and it is safe. We also anticipate that digitalization will accelerate and Ghana will become a cashless society within three years, further supporting tourism and hospitality growth.”

Content from The International Investor

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Kwame Ofosu Bamfo CEO – Bamson Group

Industrial and construction growth are keeping Ghana at the forefront of West African economies, supported by soaring growth in sectors such as steel. As of June2019, the Ghanaian steel industry off ered more than 1 million metric tonnes of installed capacity. It employs 4500 workers directly, and an additional 17,000 indirectly, and plays a critical role in the country’s ongoing industrialization process. Installed capacity is set to surge by an additional 240,000 MT in the coming years, in no small part due to industry leader B5Plus’ recent investment in new production.

B5PlusWest Africa’s steel leader

5Plus was founded in 2002 by CEO Mukesh Thakwani(Mike), who dreamed of building a world-renowned iron and steel manufacturing and trading company. Under his visionary leadership, B5Plus has grown to become the number one steel industrialist in Ghana and the region, manufacturing and trading fi nished iron and steel products that are known for their quality and durability. Thakwani described the company’s growth as a natural evolution as he and his family moved to meet untapped domestic demand. “My father was involved in the construction business and we had done a bit of steel business. When I came here, I saw a huge opportunity for the manufacturing segment. We started as a trading house and we slowly moved into a manufacturing unit. We saw an opportunity as a lot of small countries around were exporting goods to Ghana. Today we are proud to say that Ghana has become an exporter of steel to African countries. B5Plus is a leader in this, and at the same time, we’re West Africa’s biggest fabrication plant.” One of B5Plus’ strongest competitive advantages is its vertical integration: the company is a one-stop shop for iron and steel, making it an important supplier and partner of choice. It is able to produce and ship products including mild, galvanized, and stainless steel, angle, round, and fl at bars, beams, and channels, as well as rebars with high-tensile rods and iron rods. Aluminum products including chequered

plates and sheets are also on off er. It is One Stop Shop for Iron & Steel. Having already expanded rapidly since its inception, the company is now set to embark on a period of major growth. In September 2018, B5Plus broke ground on the biggest metal manufacturing in Ghana to date, an $80 million factory launched under the auspices of the government’s fl agship One District One Factory (1D1F) programme. The factory is located in the Ningo-PrampramDistrict of the Greater Accra Region. B5Plus is now leading the charge to identify and supply diff erent markets in the West African region as it seeks to reduce the domestic industry’s excess capacity and capitalize on new growth opportunities and rising regional demand. It has already witnessed some success in this: in 2018, Ghana’s exports of iron and steel circles, rods, sheets, and billets soared by 106% y-o-y. For Thakwani, Ghana was the right choice – and remains the right choice – because it is stable, welcoming, and growing fast. “Before coming to Ghana I visited other West African countries. But when I landed in Ghana, it felt like home. The warmth and reception you get from the people here is very positive. Things are moving quite well and in a positive direction. Elections are very peaceful and it is a politically sound country. During these Covid times, I believe the government has done exceptionally well to control the pandemic,” he explained. It’s no surprise, then, that contributing to

national development and domestic growth has always been a priority for B5Plus. The company is a member of the Ghana 100 club, and has won dozens of industry and business awards including the European Quality Award for quality iron and steel products, the West African Regional Achievers Award for best company providing quality materials for building and construction, and a host of service awards. Thakwani himself was named Industrialist of the Year in the Ghana Entrepreneur and Corporate Executive Awards in 2020 and AGI Industry of the Year 2019. As the company seeks to ramp up its exports and manufacturing, Thakwani is open to international partnerships. There are huge opportunities in the market, he argued, particularly with a trusted partner like B5Plus: “Internationally we are still looking for expansion into diff erent segments. We’re currently examining the potential for expansion into healthcare, as well as the service industry. We would be interested in a joint venture to diversify; we are interested in building hospitals, as we’re also into construction. There is a big demand for medical infrastructure in West Africa.”

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Mike Thakwani CEO – B5Plus

Content from The International Investor

BE STRONG

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Talking Points“It’s going to be a very dark

couple of weeks.”—JOSH MICHAUD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL HEALTH

POLICY AT THE KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION, ON THE RISING COVID DEATHS

“I THINK SHE'D WANT TO BE THE [FIRST] FEMALE PRESIDENT.”

—Marissa Velez Kraxberger former creative director at Ivanka Trump's fashion company, on Ivanka Trump

“ I T H I N K W E H AV E A G O L D E N O P P O RT U N I T Y

T O B R I N G T H E C O U N T RY BAC K T O G E T H E R .”

— d e mo c r at i v e c o n g r e s s m a n J o e m a n c h i n o f w e s t v i rg i n i a

“There will be a time we

dance again.”— h a r ry s t y l e s , o n t h e e v e n t ua l

r e t u r n o f l i v e p e r f o r m a n c e s

“IT FELT GREAT TO BE A PART OF THOSE CELEBRATORY

MOMENTS—AND IT TOTALLY TOOK ME BY SURPRISE”

—Mariah Carey on All I Want For Christmas is You being played

at election celebrations

Mariah Carey

Joe Manchin

Prince Harry

NEWSMAKERS

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“The moment you become a father, everything really

does change because then you

start to realize, well, what is the point in bringing

a new person into this world when they get

to your age and it's on fire?”

—prince harry

“Do you want to actually get something done, or do you want

to feel good among the people you

already agree with?”—Barack oBama critiquing the

slogan “defund the police”

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After a string of

demoralizing failures,

Alzheimer’s researchers

now think they’re

on track to deliver

effective treatments.

How soon will they come?

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r. Eric Reiman can’t reveal the identity of the 73-year-old woman from a rugged mountain town out-

side Medellin, Colombia, who arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport a couple of years ago for tests at Har-vard Medical School. But he will say this: Finding her may well be among the most surprising devel-opments to emerge from a nearly three-decade-long study of Colombians cursed with a gene that usually dooms its victims to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease by the age of 50.

What made the woman special was not just what doctors discovered when they first scanned her brain to measure the buildup of amyloid-beta, the sticky plaques long suspected of playing a key role in the devastating cognitive decline seen in advanced Alzheimer’s disease. She had the highest levels they’d ever recorded. What made the woman so special was that—despite those plaques—she seemed almost normal for her age.

“Nobody’s at higher risk for Alzheimer’s than she would have been,” says Reiman, a neuroscientist at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, who has spent the last three decades studying the loosely related, 6,000-person family cohort she belongs to in Colombia. “But she developed mild cognitive impairment about three decades after the average age in her family. And she still hasn’t developed Alz-heimer’s dementia.”

The Colombian woman’s case is a potent tes-tament to both the tantalizing promise—and the enormous frustration—that have come to characterize the pursuit of drugs to treat Alzhei-mer’s disease. In two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has spent $600 billion in pursuit of drugs, focusing with almost single-minded intensity on compounds designed to safely reduce or prevent the buildup of deadly plaques that are one of its primary hallmarks.

Attacking plaque is precisely the point of the new Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab, made by the drug maker Biogen, which was being tested in two separate clinical trials. High-ranking officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have sup-ported the drug and recently called preliminary trial results “highly persuasive.” But in early Novem-ber, a panel of independent experts, convened by the FDA to review data from ongoing trials, con-tradicted this assessment. They cited conflicting

data—one trial showed a mild therapeutic effect, another trial showed none—and a lack of efficacy. “The totality of the data does not seem to provide sufficient evidence” of effectiveness, declared one of the FDA’s own statisticians in a report. An FDA advisor, Dr. David Knopman of Mayo Clinic, called for a new clinical trial. “Contrary to the hope that aducanumab will help Alzheimer patients,” he wrote in a report, “the evidence shows it will offer improvement to none, it will harm some of those exposed, and it will consume enormous resources.”

Even if the FDA were to contravene its own experts and approve aducanumab in March, the drug appears unlikely to live up to the early prom-ise of the class of drugs that stave off Alzheimer’s by interfering with the accumulation of plaque in the brain. With aducanumab, Biogen’s approach reflects the dominance of a theory called the “amyloid cascade hypothesis,” which argues that amyloid-beta plaques are the first step in the

CUL DE SAC: The discovery of families in which Alzheimer’s disease is common at a young age was compelling evidence for the amyloid hypothesis. Above: a coffee farmer in Colombia who participates in a study. Right: Dr. Alois Alzheimer.

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MEDICINE

condition—the kindling that eventually ignites into the fire that causes the massive cell death and memory and thinking problems that make Alzheimer’s such a devastating disease. But that theory has been losing steam for years, as the case of the Colombian woman suggests.

The Colombian woman is just the latest piece of evidence to emerge suggesting that the causes of the debilitating brain disease are far more com-plex and heterogeneous than previously under-stood. (Despite a brain scan that revealed more amyloid-beta plaque deposition than many of her doctors had ever seen, her cognitive abilities were only mildly impaired). Which is why, even as the list of failed treatments continues to grow, many in the field have found cause for renewed optimism. In the years ahead, many now believe, promising potential cures may emerge from wholly new—and, in some cases, neglected—approaches, some of which might not target the amyloid-beta plaques at all.

This hope is fed by an explosion in technological innovations in gene sequencing, data analysis and molecular biology, which are allowing scientists to study the progression of the disease earlier and in far more detail than previously possible. It’s also fed by money: the National Institutes of Health is expected to spend $2.8 billion on Alzheimer’s research in 2020—a sixfold increase since 2011, when Congress passed legislation directing the NIH to come up with an aggressive and coordinated plan to accelerate research with the ambitious goal of coming up with a way to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer’s by 2025.

That ambition reflects a growing urgency on the part of an aging public, their doctors and public health officials. By the year 2050, the number of Americans with the disease will double to 14 mil-lion, with a projected cost in treatment and care that, by some estimates, will top $2 trillion—10 per-cent of the present U.S. GDP. Scientists are racing to diffuse a ticking demographic time bomb.

Although the field seems unlikely to meet the 2025 deadline, what researchers have learned in the past few years has given them a far more detailed and nuanced understanding of the disease. And it is raising hopes that, despite the setback of adu-canumab, we are finally getting closer to cracking Alzheimer’s disease.

Plaque DistractionFrom the beginning, there was good reason to suspect the thick plaques that characterize the dis-ease might also be their cause. In 1901, a 50-year-old woman named Auguste Dieter was placed under the care of Dr. Alois Alzheimer at the Frankfurt Psychi-atric Hospital with an inexplicable set of symptoms, which included memory loss, disorientation, hal-lucinations, aphasia and delusions. “I have lost myself,” she lamented shortly before her passing in 1906, according to Alzheimer’s meticulous notes.

In an autopsy, Alzheimer noted the buildup of dark clumps of plaques formed by protein frag-ments known as amyloid-beta, along with the other two symptoms that are now considered the primary physical hallmarks of the disease that bears his name: the tangles of stringy protein molecules known as tau that clog up the space between brain cells and disrupt normal cell function, and massive cerebral atrophy caused by the death of the gray F

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matter we rely upon to think, feel and live.Still, the modern age of Alzheimer’s research

wouldn’t begin until decades later, when Robert Katzman, a prominent UCSD neurologist, penned an 1978 editorial arguing that the obscure condi-tion known as “Alzheimer disease”—a term pre-viously reserved for those developing dementia before age 65—was actually the primary cause of what was then known only as senility. By that measure, Katzman argued, Alzheimer’s disease ranked as the fourth or fifth most common cause of death in the United States and thus constituted a vastly overlooked public health challenge. In the years that followed, the first patient interest groups began to mobilize and the newly estab-lished National Institute of Aging began pouring resources into research.

Then came the discovery and study of families carrying rare mutations, like those seen in the mountains outside Medellin, Colombia, that caused them to develop the symptoms of full-blown Alz-heimer’s disease far earlier than elsewhere. Using the genetic tools available at the time, researchers throughout the 1990s homed in on specific muta-tions that appeared to be present only in family members who had developed early-onset Alzhei-mer’s—mutations that were entirely absent in close relatives spared by the disease. Virtually all the genetic typos seemed to appear on genes that could be directly linked to the buildup of the amyloid-beta plaques in the brain.

These discoveries were among the most compel-ling evidence for the amyloid hypothesis, which by the early 2000s had become the dominant model used to explain how and why Alzheimer’s disease progresses. And with the advent of brain scanning technologies that allowed clinicians for the first time to measure the plaques in the brains of living people, it suddenly seemed possible to track this accumulation in real time.

The implications were clear: if scientists could develop a drug capable of countering the accumu-lation of plaques, we could halt the progression of Alzheimer’s, and the heartbreaking cognitive decline that came with it, in its tracks. “I was a student at the time—and they were heady times,” recalls Scott Small, a neurologist who directs the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University. “We thought we had it figured it all out.”

Unfortunately, things have not proven that sim-ple. Between 1998 and 2017, there were 146 unsuc-cessful attempts to develop medicines to treat and potentially prevent Alzheimer’s, according to a 2018 report put out by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the vast majority focused on the amyloid hypothesis. (The last Alzheimer’s medication to receive FDA approval was Namenda in 2003, a drug that aims to tempo-rarily boost cognitive performance by boosting the chemical messengers in the brain known as neu-rotransmitters).

The list of disappointing drugs that promised to cure or slow the progression of the disease is long. There was, for instance, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson’s bapineuzumab, a monoclonal anti-body designed to bind to amyloid-beta. In 2012, the study’s principal investor at Harvard declared human trials had produced “absolutely no evidence at all of a clinical benefit of treatment on either of the primary measures, one cog-nitive and one functional” in 1,100 patients with mild to moderate symptoms of the disease. Another widely anticipated drug, semagacestat, was halted after some recipients devel-oped skin cancer and their cognition declined. In 2016, Eli Lilly & Co’s solanezumab, “did nothing to improve cognition” in the phase 3, placebo-controlled trial of 2,129 patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease who took the medication for more than a year.

The latest shining hope has been aducanumab, a drug whose on-again, off-again journey toward approval seems to encapsulate the infuriating ambi-guity of the present moment. In 2016, the drug, developed by Biogen and Eisai, made the cover of Nature Magazine after researchers announced it had slowed cognitive decline and reduced plaques in the brains of a small group of study participants. In 2018, massive phase 3 trials kicked off in clinics around the globe, slated to finish in 2021. In March 2019, Biogen announced that a preliminary look at the results, known as a “futility analysis,” had shown

“IT WAS AN INCREDIBLY PAINFUL

TIME FOR THE FIELD—PAINFUL FOR PATIENTS—PAINFUL FOR FAMILIES. IT

WAS HEARTBREAKING.”

MEDICINE

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the medicine wasn’t working as it should on the more than 3,000 hopeful early stage Alzheimer’s patients participating in the study. They shut the trial down two years early and declared it a failure.

“It was an incredibly painful time for the field—painful for patients—painful for families,” says Rei-man, who was overseeing trials at two institutions. “[There was] concern from industry stakeholders —why are they making investments in Alzheimer’s disease?—and some flight from industry. It was heartbreaking.”

But that was not the end of the story. Seven months after shutting down the trial, Biogen and Esai took the unusual step of announcing they had made a mistake. The drug, they claimed, seemed to have been working after all. At a packed indus-try conference in December 2019, drug company representatives explained that the futility analysis had looked at only half the patients. After taking another look at the data, they found that cognitive benefits took longer than expected but had begun to kick in toward the time the trial was stopped. The company announced plans to resume an open-label trial in March and petition the FDA for approval of the drug.

The announcement was met with immense relief and cautious optimism by Reiman and his colleagues. After the conference, most agreed more data was needed to convince them the drug actu-ally is an effective treatment. This past August, the FDA announced it had granted the drug “priority review,” and will make a decision no later than March 7, 2021. If approved, it would be the first new treatment in 18 years.

Then came the November conflict. Early in the month, the FDA posted documents to its website suggesting many of the agency’s clinical review-ers, including the director of the agency’s neuro-science division, supported approval of the drug. The announcement came just days before the high-stakes review from an FDA advisory panel consisting of the field’s leading independent experts; it caused Biogen’s stock to spike by more than 40 percent. But when the panel met, committee members accused agency staff of bias and rendered a unanimous, though nonbinding, verdict: The evidence was not sufficiently convincing to recommend approval. The announcement dimmed hopes and sent Bio-gen’s stock plummeting back to earth.

THE DARK AGESAfter Namenda, approved in 2003 for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, came a long list of drugs that promised to cure or slow the progression of the disease, yet turned out to be disappointing. Top to bottom: Brain cells with amyloid plaques; Biogen’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Namenda.

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For many, this bipolar sequence of events only highlighted the folly of continuing to pursue a cure based on a single hypothesis. Some, like Columbia’s Small, had already embraced the role of critic. The “basic idea” of the amyloid hypothesis, he says, “was the right hypothesis at the time. But honestly, if we were to just wake up today with all the information we have accumulated in the last 25 years, I don’t think anyone would have proposed an amyloid cas-cade hypothesis.”

“You’re never going to hit the home run unless you’re in the right playing field,” he says. “Until now, we’ve been playing on the wrong playing field. We’re on the right field now. The home run will be hit. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later for my patients’ sake.” Embracing Complexitymany researchers agree that a promising new era in Alzheimer’s research has begun—one that emphasizes the idea that a thousand flowers should be allowed to bloom in the research laboratories where scientists are seeking a cure. “We’re not giv-ing up on the approaches for amyloid but the diver-sity of targets we’re now able to identify is creating a lot of excitement,” says Richard J. Hodes, M.D.,-director of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “We’re seeing a new wave of studies coming forward.”

Hodes notes that while the NIH’s National Insti-tute on Aging is supporting 46 drug trials of interest this year, 30 of them are targets other than amyloid. It’s likely just the beginning.

Back when the amyloid-beta drugs now in the clinic were being developed, he notes, just four genes had been identified that were known to be important for Alzheimer’s disease. In recent years, the NIA has funded researchers collecting data from thousands of brains and has overseen a massive effort to compile them and isolate specific genetic sequences that appear to be correlated to the disease—or protection against it. In 2018 alone there were another 30 or so discovered, “which is more than there have been any previous year and the numbers are rising exponentially,” says Hodes. The list of seemingly relevant genetic sequences cur-rently tops more than 500. Research groups have narrowed this list down to more than 50 that seem promising leads for new drugs.

“The reason that’s important is just as a starting point for what comes next,” Hodes explains. “When we know genes that affect the risk for Alzheimer’s, we can understand what those genes do, the pro-teins they make, the messenger RNA that comes from them. And now, with also emerging bioin-formatics, we’re able to put all this information together and see new molecular interactions that differ in the brains of individuals affected by Alz-heimer’s from those who are not.”

That includes the elderly Colombian woman whose remarkable mental clarity—despite a brain full of amyloid-beta plaques—so impressed Reiman. Last winter, Reiman and his colleagues announced they had traced the cause of her unexpected mental resilience to a single “one in a million” genetic typo, one that could provide a powerful new tool to fight the disease if its effects can be replicated with a drug.

The protective genetic mutation illustrates the kind of insight that would have been impossible just a few years ago. The elderly lady was discov-ered during routine screening, using brain scan-ning technologies refined over the last decade that allow researchers to measure the amount of amy-loid buildup in living brains. Reiman and his col-laborators then used gene-sequencing technologies and powerful computers to compare her DNA to that of others in her kinship cohort afflicted with the disease. They quickly focused on unique changes in her genetic sequence already suspected of playing a role in brain function.

The mostly likely mutation seems to interfere with the ability of two key proteins to bind togeth-er—a binding that seems to be crucial for the pro-gression of the deadly neural cascade that usually results in the tau tangles and cell death. Reiman and his colleagues demonstrated they could replicate this effect in the lab using small molecule drugs that consist of antibodies which interfere with the binding in a similar way. The next step is to show that it can pass the blood-brain barrier and work its magic inside actual patients.

“Out of a single case report we actually developed an antibody that might be a treatment if we can get into the brain,” he says.

Drugs that replicate the mutation found in the Colombian woman could “have a more profound effect on treatment and, in particular, prevention C

HINNAPONG/GETTY

TALKING HEADS Drugs that replicate genetic

mutations found in people who do not develop Alzheimer’s despite

the presence of plaque in the brain could have a profound effect

on treatment and prevention. Above: an MRI of the brain of an elderly neurology patient.

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of Alzheimer’s disease.” As could any number of other approaches, which presumably scientists could tailor to individual patients based on a more sophisticated understanding of how the role differ-ent genetic profiles play in how the disease develops.

“Whether amyloid has a role or not, and I con-tinue to be agnostic, we all agree that we need a more diversified portfolio of treatments, and that there may be many different paths by which you end up developing Alzheimer’s,” Reiman says.

A Period of Reexaminationgene sequencing technologies and bioinFormatics are just two of the new tools that are allowing scien-tists to break new ground. In a laboratory perched atop a bluff overlooking the Pacific in La Jolla, Cal-ifornia, Fred “Rusty” Gage, President of the Salk Institute, is transforming skin cells taken from Alz-heimer’s patients into stem cells—undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can be trans-formed into specific types of cells. In this case, Gage is turning the stem cells into baby neurons in petri dishes. The next step is to meticulously track their degeneration as they mature, in the hope of under-standing precisely what goes wrong when brain cells prone to Alzheimer’s age and how mutations unique to individual patients can disrupt normal cell function. Gage was struck by the vast variety of different ways he witnessed neurons derived from different patients begin to break down.

Through this work, Gage has come to believe that Alzheimer’s is not simply one disease, but many—each caused by the collapse of one or more of the myriad cellular systems crucial to upkeep and health of the neurons that do our thinking. Genetic flaws may hasten the collapse of these cellular sys-tems, but the most powerful force bringing each one about is something far more universal and ines-capable: The relentless passage of time.

“We are going through a period of reexam-ination of our underlying principles regarding Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. “The biggest risk for Alzheimer’s disease is age, and we don’t really understand aging very well. You’re not going to get Alzheimer’s disease at 11. So there’s a lot of interest right now in setting up models where you can look at the disease through these mutations, for example, but you have to add aging in there and understand aging.”

FRESH STARTMany researchers have recently developed a newfound appreciation for the heterogeneity and complexity of Alzheimer’s disease and the changes it makes in the brain. Top to bottom: Fred “Rusty” Gage; brain cells; boxing trainer Adrian Davis helps his wife, Brenda, who has Alzheimer’s; and Dr. Reisa Sperling.

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Generally, there are eight different kinds of cellu-lar processing that seem to go wrong in cells as we age—any one of which, Gage argues, could poten-tially catalyze the systemic collapse that occurs in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s.

As we age, the power plants of the cell, known as mitochondria, lose the ability to effectively process the fuel needed to power cellular processes. The cell’s garbage collection services begin to slow down, which causes zombie cells, misfolded proteins and other cellular debris to accumulate in the cell. Mean-while, the quality control team of the cell—enzymes that detect mistakes in DNA and fix them—stop working, creating more potential for chaos. The cells become unhealthy and secrete signals that cause inflammation. The DNA begins to deteriorate, and the on-off switch for certain genes gets broken off.

“All of these different events accumulate with age,” Gage says. “And what’s happening right now that I find very exciting is that we are beginning to under-stand how interrelated all these problems are. All these systems need to be working, and you could have perturbation in one of them and that will affect other ones.”

Alzheimer ’s , under Gage’s vision, is not a dis-ease where brain cells suddenly die, as if struck down instantaneously by

a heart attack. Rather, the cells seem to suffocate to death on cellular garbage, or collapse because the walls have fallen in, or short out because energy production has somehow gone awry. Gage’s petri dishes are allowing him to dysregulate different systems and see how different populations of Alz-heimer’s-induced cells respond to different drugs, based on which systems have been perturbed.

It’s entirely possible, says Gage, that drugs designed to reduce amyloid-beta may work on some patients—but not on others. And despite the fail-ures and disappointments of recent decades, some researchers argue the progress is not as discourag-ing as it may appear.

Indeed, plenty of researchers still believe that

amyloid-beta may hold the key to understanding the disease. In recent years, many have begun to suggest that perhaps the reason drugs that target amyloid-beta have so far failed to cure the disease is not that the harmful plaques aren’t essential to the disease. They may have failed because the drugs are being administered to the patients too late.

Still, even those researchers who are still primarily focused on plaques have recently developed a new-found appreciation for the disease’s heterogeneity and complexity. “Alzheimer’s is a very complex set of changes in the brain,” says Dr. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist who directs the Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is leading several of the efforts aimed at testing out the effectiveness of some of the amyloid-beta drugs on patients who are at a relatively early stage in the disease

The failure of any system involved in protein han-dling can have profound consequences. “I think that is what goes wrong in all neurodegenerative diseases, not just Alzheimer’s disease—that these proteins you make normally you can’t figure out how to get rid of them as you get older,” she says. “The system breaks down. I totally agree with that. It just happens to be that the two proteins we have the most problem han-dling in Alzheimer’s disease are amyloid and tau.”

In the early 1970s, Nixon declared war on cancer and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute was going gangbusters for heart disease in America. At the time, however, Alzheimer’s disease was not rec-ognized as a disease of older adults. “When I look at the history of Alzheimer’s disease, I see a patchwork of progress and failure,” says Jason Karlawish, a Pro-fessor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at Penn, who cares for patients at the Penn Memory Center. “There’s been a lot of decent progress around understanding what is the disease, how to diagnose it, and therefore get closer to ideas about what might be plausible, druggable targets. For a disease that wasn’t even recognized until 1976, that’s pretty darn good progress. That’s why there’s reason to be optimistic.”

How long it will take to gain the upper hand remains the big question. But with scores of new trials moving toward maturity and a flood of fed-eral money, researchers expect to make strides in the decades ahead. Most important, many scien-tists believe they are finally on the right track.

“OUT OF A SINGLE CASE REPORT WE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED AN ANTIBODY THAT MIGHT BE A TREATMENT IF WE CAN GET INTO THE BRAIN.”

MEDICINE

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LEGAL RECKONINGDonald Trump’s dismal

record in his election lawsuits—just one win

out of more than 30 cases filed—is part of a larger pattern of court

defeats during his nearly four years as president.

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by Steve Friess

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HOW THE COURTS Thwarted DONALD TRUMP

Even with the president appointing F E DE R A L J U D GE Sat a fevered pace, the judiciary has proven to be his

most S IGN I F ICA N T ROA DB L O C K—especially lately

36 N E W S W E E K . C O M N O V E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 7

ith the trump campaign scoring just one victory so far out of the more than 30 lawsuits it has filed in six states, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when a Philadelphia ap-peals court at the end of November became the latest to reject a challenge by the president to the results of the election. What was noteworthy was the scathing nature of the decision written by a Trump-appointed judge, who dismissed the case as having “no merit.” Also significant but largely unnoticed as electoral drama consumed the nation: The string of legal losses and dismissals suffered by the campaign is just one of several major defeats the courts have handed Donald Trump this fall on a wide variety of is-sues—and that, despite the large number of judges the president has appointed while in office, such defeats have been a common occurrence during his presidency.

Just this week, for instance, a California federal judge struck down the administration’s policy tightening eligibility and raising minimum salaries for foreign employees who come to the U.S. on high-skilled work visas. Federal judges this fall also ruled that two Trump appointees—Chad Wolf as acting Homeland Security sec-retary and William Perry Pendley as administrator of the Bureau of Land Management—were illegally installed, which means that much of their work in those roles must be voided. Another set-back this October: TikTok, the video-sharing site, successfully sued to block an order from the Commerce Department to force app stores to stop offering the service. And that same month, Trump’s attempts to have the Justice Department step in to represent him in a defamation lawsuit brought by a writer who accused him of sexual assault were obliterated by a federal judge in New York.

What’s more, the rulings, in both the election-related suits and the non-election matters, have come from judges across the po-litical spectrum—conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Re-publicans, including some who were appointed by Trump himself.

Indeed, in an era when Congress has rarely pushed back against expansions of presidential authority and when no amount of me-dia scrutiny has cowed the president’s persistent efforts to demol-ish norms, one bedrock institution has stood alone in saying no—and saying it repeatedly—to Donald Trump: the courts.

“Despite his attempts to flout the rule of law, when [Trump has] acted egregiously outside the scope of his authority, the courts have knocked him down,” says attorney Marisa Mal-eck, a former law clerk to Justice Clar-ence Thomas who served as general counsel to the District of Columbia’s Republican Party before resigning in 2016 after Trump won the presidency.

Maleck, in fact, was one of doz-ens of conservative legal scholars who signed a letter before the 2016

LOSING BATTLESTop left: Trump supporters

stand by their man, but that hasn’t helped him in court. Meanwhile, judges this fall

ruled the naming of William Perry Pendley (top right) and Chad Wolf (bottom)

to top administration posts was illegal. C

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majority opinion against the Trump administration in a 6-3 ruling last June that found LGBTQ employees are protected from employ-ment discrimination under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. A month later, both Gorsuch and Trump’s second appointee, Justice Brett Kavana-ugh, joined a 7-2 ruling against Trump in which he tried to block the release of his taxes and other financial records to a grand jury in a criminal proceeding just because he’s the sitting president.

“In our system of government, as this court has often stated, no one is above the law,” Kavanaugh wrote. “That principle applies, of course, to a president.”

“The Supreme Court decisions regarding Trump’s taxes this past term was a surprise,” says Chicago attorney Pejman Yousefzadeh, another co-signer of the 2016 letter. “With the efforts made to cre-ate a conservative court, I was concerned that the court would be excessively deferential to him. That didn’t happen.”

This check on Trump is what conservative legal theorists who supported him were counting on, New York University Law Profes-sor Richard Epstein says. “We would never vote for him if we really thought, for example, that he was going to seize power and prevent the transition” to a successor, Epstein says. “I think the system is basically held on this issue. And I think it’s a compliment to the system because he does have really autocratic tendencies. I don’t think there’s anybody who doubts that.”

No Partisan Divideat no time have the courts so uniformly and dismissively stymied Trump than over the past two months as judges appoint-ed by both political parties shot down dozens of cases brought by the president or Republican allies seeking to make voting more difficult or overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

The day before the November 3 election, for instance, an-ti-Trump forces held their breath as U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush known for stri-dent conservative leanings, weighed whether to throw out nearly 127,000 early votes cast in Houston at drive-through polling places. Hanen ultimately ruled the votes would count, the same decision made the day before by the all-Republican-appointed Texas Su-preme Court.

Weeks later, it was a flurry of five losses in a single day at the Democratic-majority Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in cases striv-ing to throw out thousands of ballots, that seemed to precipitate the president’s decision to give the General Services Administration the go-ahead to formally begin a Biden transition. The decisions, handed down on November 23, came two days after Federal Dis-trict Judge Matthew Brann, a well-known Republican appointed by Obama to the federal bench in 2012, dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit that sought to invalidate millions of Pennsylvania votes.

In a blistering decision, Brann, who was recommended for the bench by GOP Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, said the

election warning that Trump was unfit to be president because they did not “trust him to respect constitutional limits in the rest of his conduct in office.” As it turned out, they were right to be ner-vous about Trump’s interest in exceeding his boundaries or reshap-ing the judiciary. As of December 2, Trump has had 229 judicial appointments confirmed, for an average of 57 judges for each year he’s been in office. That far outpaces his two predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both with about 41 confirmed judges per year. (Only another one-termer, Jimmy Carter, had a higher average than Trump, with more than 65 per year.)

On a surprising number of instances, even the increasingly conservative U.S. Supreme Court flummoxed the president. When Trump attempted by fiat to rescind the Deferred Action for Child-hood Arrivals program, which allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to stay, the Court rejected the idea by a 5-4 margin. When Trump wanted to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census, the Court again rejected the idea by a 5-4 margin because his agencies failed to “offer genuine justifi-cations for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

Even his own appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the Court in 2017, hasn’t always toed the line. Gorsuch wrote the C

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SUPREME JUSTICEEarlier this year, the Court overturned Trump’s termination of the “Dreamers” program. Even the president’s own appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch (left) and Brett Kavanaugh, haven’t always toed the line.

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Trump team’s claim of widespread improprieties with mail-in ballots were based on “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” and were “unsupported by evidence.” Four days later, when the latest Pennsylvania case made it before the Federal Appellate Court, it was Trump-appointee Stephanos Bibas who sharply repudiated the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, writing: “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

“A Mixed Record”yet while almost all the recent election-related decisions have gone against Trump, some legal experts point out that the courts did give Trump several important pre-election victories on the voting process and some key wins on other topics as well. The Supreme Court, for instance, reversed lower court rulings that extended the time for acceptable arrival of absentee ballots in Wisconsin and to make absentee balloting easier in Alabama and Texas. The high court, in earlier cases during his term, also allowed Trump to redirect federal funds to build the border wall even after Congress refused to allocate the money; to delay pro-viding his tax records to House committees investigating him; and to ban immigration from a select group of Muslim-majority nations, says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of Cali-fornia at Berkeley School of Law.

“Yes, the courts have done more to check President Trump than Congress has, but it’s a mixed record,” Chemerinsky says. “My big-gest fear was the courts would issue an order to the Trump admin-istration and Trump would say, ‘I don’t care what the courts say, I’m going to do it or not do it anyway.’ Then the rule of law is over.”

The constitutional crisis that Chemerinsky and other legal ex-perts feared never materialized. Yet the Berkeley dean remains alarmed by the failure of the courts to move more quickly on pend-ing legal action that accuses Trump of violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which bars a president from personally profit-ing from his position—including one lawsuit that Chemerinsky is involved in. As part of the legal team representing the Citizens for

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Responsibility and Ethics, he sued Trump three days after he was inaugurated in 2017. Nearly four years later, after a big CREW win at the appellate level, the case is pending before the Supreme Court.

“This isn’t going to be ruled on during the four years of the Trump presidency,” Chemerinsky says. “There have been two oth-er emoluments clause suits that spent the entire four years at the procedural level. The claim was that the president every day is vio-lating the Constitution and yet the court has spent the entire time just on whether or not the plaintiff has standing to be able to sue. There is a place where the courts have not checked the president.”

Yousefzadeh says Trump’s team used the court’s slow pace, too, to create roadblocks for Congress in trying to compel testimony in a panoply of corruption probes including those related to foreign meddling in the 2016 election and Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukraine to launch a criminal probe of Biden’s possible involve-ment of the ouster of the country’s prosecutor general. Dozens of subpoenas were defied with claims that the likes of former Chief of Staff Don McGahn or National Security Adviser John Bolton’s

discussions with Trump were protected by executive privilege. Rep-resentative Adam Schiff, chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and a leader in efforts to investigate the president, said he moved ahead without hearing from those witnesses to present the two articles of impeachment that passed against Trump be-cause litigating those subpoenas would take too long. “We are not going to allow the White House to engage us in a lengthy game of rope-a-dope in the courts,” Schiff said in October 2019.

“One of the legacies that really concerned me from this is if the courts won’t enforce subpoenas to testify before Congress, and if Congress won’t enforce them even through impeachment pro-ceedings, why would anybody comply?” Chemerinsky asks. “The subpoenas are meaningless now.”

An Independent Streakstill, maleck says, trump lost more in court than she expected, a fact that she believes also surprised a president who, during his 2016 campaign, told an evangelical Christian audience:

“CHARGES REQUIRE SPECIFIC allegations AND THEN proof. WE HAVE NEITHER HERE,” A TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGE SAID.

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Department of Justice. This, too, is seen as a credit to the strength of the judiciary inasmuch as the court system wouldn’t tolerate it, Yousefzadeh says. “What prevented the ‘lock him up’ or ‘lock her up’ chants from becoming realized is the fact that you did actually have good people in the Justice Department who said, ‘This is ridic-ulous, this is a non-starter’ and even the current attorney general realized that this would be an appalling step too far,” he says.

Ironically, Trump’s conservative appointees may end up curbing executive power down the line. In recent decades, as Congress has been gridlocked, presidents have increasingly tried to use executive orders and rules promulgated by agencies to make policy. University of Nebraska Law Professor Gus Hurwitz, another co-signer of the 2016 letter expressing fears about Trump, believes the federal judi-ciary molded by Trump—which is dominated by originalist judges who believe in interpreting the Constitution as it was understood when first written and who particularly revere the concept of sepa-ration of powers—“is probably going to be at the vanguard of revers-ing that trend and saying to future administrations, ‘No, you need to go back to Congress and ask them to clarify or update or change this

law’ and ‘Congress, you need to clarify or update or change this law.’ So I’m optimistic for the viability of our constitutional order and the role of the separation of powers and the separate branches of government fulfilling each of their purposes.”

For his part, Epstein finds all of the fear about Trump to have been overblown.

“Ask yourself the following simple ques-tion: Has Donald Trump ever disobeyed a court order?” Epstein says. “The answer is no. No one’s going to deny that he has cer-

tain kinds of autocratic tendencies or that he has a certain kind of intellectual instability. He’s won some, he’s lost some, but his bark is much worse than his bite as far as I can tell.”

Yousefzadeh remains anxious, though, that the judiciary has sustained damage under Trump, who showed future would-be autocrats the loopholes and weaknesses to exploit even if Trump himself wasn’t clever enough to take full advantage.

“I would like to think the courts would remain the last line of defense, even if the justice department were fully bent to a future president’s will,” Yousefzadeh says. “But we’ve seen how many norms have gone by the wayside over the past four years, and that was with a relatively incompetent president. I shudder to think of how much worse it could be if a president who had it together far more on a personal level might come along and renew and assault on our legal institutions.”

→ Steve Friess is a NEWSWEEK contributor based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Follow him on Twitter at @SteveFriess.

“If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide.” He repeat-ed similar remarks so often during his tenure, dismissing many judgments that went against him from Obama appointees as po-litically motivated, that Chief Justice Roberts rebuked him. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts told the Associated Press in 2018. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

In the flurry of election-related cases, Bibas wasn’t the only Trump-appointed judge to shoot him down. On November 19, U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg dismissed a lawsuit brought in Georgia that sought to have the presidential election results thrown out due to changes in how voters’ signatures were verified.

“To interfere with the result of an election that has already conclud-ed would be unprecedented and harm the public in countless ways,” wrote Grimberg, appointed by the president last year.

Says Maleck, “That highlights how strong the separation of pow-ers really are.”

Epstein is not surprised. The selection of judges had been out-

sourced to Federalist Society vice president Leonard Leo, a long-time conservative legal activist who provided the administration with lists of preferred judges, Epstein says. Those who made the cut had “an intellectual integrity and a real commitment to judicial restraint, property values and separation of powers. The thought that these people would do his political bidding—you’re dreaming. Not going to happen.”

Another front on which Trump was flummoxed: None of his political foes or foils—Obama, vanquished Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton or Biden’s son Hunter—were prosecuted by his

NON-STARTERSAttempts by Trump to throw out votes in Pennsylvania or “lock up” political rivals like former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have gone nowhere.

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Unique Places to Spend the Night

It’s always fun when visiting a new place to take a look at some of the sights that might not appear in the

typical guidebook, and the same can be said for where to rest your head. Whether or not you’re ready to

embark on your next adventure yet, it never hurts to start planning. Consider adding some of these unusual

lodging experiences to the itinerary. From a room made of ice, to one made from a converted airplane,

here are some of the most uncommon places to spend a night around the world. —Alexandra Schonfeld

UNCHARTED

ARCTIC BATH, HARADS, SWEDENThis floating sauna just south of the Arctic Circle melds completely into its frosty surroundings. During the summer months, the cabins float on the Lule River. When the river freezes over, they become stationary. In the middle of the main spa building—which looks like a pile of sticks—visitors enjoy a plunge pool. (See #6 on following spread.)

SWAY BOY RICHARDS OPENS UPTikTok and Triller star Josh Richards looks out for other emerging talent. » P.48

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04 The Yays Crane Apartment

Amsterdam, NetherlandsThis crane on KNSM Island—formerly a working dock and now teeming with art galleries and industrial design shops—is part of Amsterdam history. The Figee Crane 2868, converted into a three-story boutique hotel, is a modern, spacious and natural-light filled place to spend a night overlooking the IJ River below.

01 Dog Bark Park InnCottonwood, Idaho

The United States is filled with quirky roadside attractions, but this hotel might take the cake. Opened over two decades ago, a husband-and-wife duo run this bed-and-breakfast built in the shape of a giant beagle. And of course, your own furry friend is welcome to accompany you.

02 Boeing 727 Fuselage Suite, Hotel Costa Verde

Quepos, Costa RicaThis coastal hotel nestled along the Costa Rican rainforest provides several unique accommodations from which to choose, the most unique being a completely refurbished Boeing airplane which can be rented in its entirety as a two-bedroom suite.

03 Hôtel de GlaceQuebec City, Canada

This hotel is truly made out of ice; it melts away annually and is recreated in a new theme. Each ice-sculpted room or suite is maintained at a “balmy” 27 degrees Fahrenheit. But fear not, each fairytale-like room is equipped with an arctic sleeping bag to help visitors stay toasty through the night.

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09 Wellington ZooWellington, New Zealand

Enjoy an up-close-and-personal adventure, especially enjoyed by kids. Rent out the zoo overnight for a group of up to 80 people to explore after-hours and then unroll sleeping bags to get some shut-eye overlooking Monkey Island or near other adorable critters.

08 Giraffe ManorNairobi, Kenya

Just steps from some of the most sought-after landscapes to explore on safari in East Africa is this luxurious residence with an elegant 1930s facade. Upon your stay, you may even be visited by the herd of giraffes that live on the property and have been known to poke their heads into the windows morning and evening.

07 The Windmill of Karamitsos

Trypiti, GreeceGreece is known for its beautiful islands and crystal-clear surrounding turquoise water. Book a stay in your very own windmill in this small town on the island of Milos. The private accommodations on three levels look out over a beautiful, isolated oasis.

06 Arctic BathHarads, Sweden

(See previous spread.)

05 BaseCamp BonnBonn, Germany

While youth hostels sometimes get a bad rap as a budget way to travel, this one might have you rethinking that four-star hotel. This perfectly Instagrammable collection of vintage caravans, sleeper trains, Airstreams and more is each decorated thematically—ranging from Drag to Space Shuttle to Hunter’s Hut.

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At just 18 yeArs old, sociAl mediA influencer josh richArds hAs been able to go from TikTok star to investor to be reckoned with in a

short period of time. “I was always doing things that were entrepreneurial. So when I was able to grow such a large following, it just made sense.” In July 2020, as a ban of the video sharing service TikTok loomed in the United States, Rich-ards became an investor in rival video social media platform Triller, agreeing also to serve as its chief strategy officer. “I saw the press about China and the data being shared. I knew I had almost a duty because my whole journey has been as a creator first.” He also co-founded TalentX, a management company for influencers. “No one had the creators’ back. It was all these managers com-ing into the scene and trying to make a quick dollar off these young kids.” With his massive social media platform, two podcasts and multiple business ventures under his belt, Richards is here to stay. “Every single day is just something new and something so crazy.”

Josh RichardsDo you think influencers on TikTok and other platforms are more in tune with emerging companies and platforms to invest in?These Gen Zers are the ones discovering the apps that are popping off. They know which platforms work and which ones don’t; that’s why they’re on them.

What happens when you age out of a platform like TikTok? How do you grow with your audience?Everyone probably has a different strategy. What I like to do is add depth. I have two podcasts. I’m doing angel investing, a lot of equity plays. I’m going for more of the entrepreneurial way to add to my portfolio.

What excited you about Triller, and did the past looming ban of TikTok inspire your interest?Triller was very forward-thinking. They cared about the creator. They were listening to our ideas, which TikTok had never done. They were wanting to implement new ideas, like to monetize better for the creator to really help the creator and the user have a better time on the app.

How has the pandemic impacted you as a young person?I’m a Canadian citizen. I moved to L.A. nine months ago, when I was only 17. The toughest thing for me is I haven’t been able to see my family or hometown friends. I’ve really been relying on all these Sway Boys to be that family for me. —H. Alan Scott

“Every single day is just

something new and

something so crazy.”

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