China playing a bigger global role as Lehmann had foreseen

The year 2017 ended on a sad note, with an email from IMD, a top European executive school in Switzerland, saying that professor and founder of Evian Group Jean-Pierre Lehmann had passed away at the age of 72.

In May, when I had an enlightening discussion with Lehmann in the IMD's picturesque and tranquil campus beside Geneva Lake in Lausanne, he told me that he still had the energy to speak on political economy from early morning to night for seven consecutive days. He was heading for an annual executive leadership program in Hong Kong University. In his inimitable humble manner, Lehmann said the young Chinese attending that program had taught him a lot about an evolving China.

It was while reading the long and touchingly penned email, summarizing Lehmann's prolific career and his passion about Asia, China in particular, and speaking at two of his memorials in France and Switzerland that I really realized he had left us forever.