‘Europe needs to get off its butt’

Europe risks becoming little more than a tourist attraction for wealthy Chinese if it does not reform, luxury goods group Richemont’s chairman and chief executive, Johann Rupert, said on Wednesday.

Europe risks becoming little more than a tourist attraction for wealthy Chinese if it does not reform, luxury goods group Richemont’s chairman and chief executive, Johann Rupert, said on Wednesday.

HT Image

“A few years ago, I said if people do not watch it Europe will become an open-air museum for travelling Chinese. Well, we are halfway there,” the South African said. “You cannot work 35 hours a week, want to retire by 50 with full pension, have eight weeks of holiday and expect to be bailed out by people who work their butts off. Life does not work like that.”