Martin Bouygues

Martin Bouygues (born 3 May 1952) is the chairman and chief executive officer of the French company Bouygues (around 130,000 people in the world); founded by his father Francis Bouygues in 1952.

In 2015 Martin Bouygues was listed as the world’s 481st richest person, and is a billionaire.

Starting off

He joined the Bouygues group in 1974 as works supervisor, before holding positions in sales management. In 1978, he founded Maison Bouygues, a catalogue real estate business. In 1982, he was appointed to Bouygues’ Board of Directors. In 1984, the Bouygues group and Maison Bouygues acquired SAUR, a French water treatment and distribution company. In 1986, he became Chairman and CEO of Maison Bouygues. In 1987, he was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Board.

Management

In the 1990s, with Martin Bouygues at the helm, the Group expanded its activities around three sectors: construction — especially at the international level — and Telecoms (Bouygues Telecom) and medias (TF1, LCI).

Martin Bouygues was considered a worthy successor to his father after his successful resistance to Vincent Bolloré’s takeover attempt in 1997.

Royalty-free

Royalty-free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.

Computer standards

Many computer industry standards, especially those developed and submitted by industry consortium's or individual companies, involve royalties for the actual use of these standards. These royalties are typically charged on a "per port" basis, where the manufacturer of end-user devices has to pay a small fixed fee for each device sold, and also include a substantial annual fixed fee. With millions of devices sold each year, the royalties can amount to several millions of dollars, which is a significant burden for the manufacturer. Examples of such royalties-based standards include IEEE 1394, HDMI, and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.

Royalty-free standards do not include any "per-port" or "per-volume" charges or annual payments for the actual implementation of the standard, even though the text of the actual specification is typically protected by copyright and needs to be purchased from the standards body. Most open standards are royalty-free, and many proprietary standards are royalty-free as well. Examples of royalty-free standards include DisplayPort, VGA, VP8, and Matroska.

John Caudwell

John David Caudwell (born 7 October 1952) is an English businessman, philanthropist and co-founder of mobile phone retailer Phones 4u. He also invests in fashion, real estate and other industries, and chairs Caudwell Children, a charity which benefits ill or disabled children and their families. He is also known for being the UK's biggest taxpayer.

Early life

Caudwell was born in Birmingham but moved with his family as a baby to Stoke-on-Trent and raised in Wellesley Street in Shelton, and with his brother Brian attended Shelton Church of England School, and then Berry Hill High School. His father had a stroke when he was 14 and died 4 years later. His mother lives in the Midlands.

Caudwell abandoned his A-levels to become an apprentice at Michelin, and worked for several years there as an engineering foreman while gaining an HNC in mechanical engineering. Whilst working at Michelin he also ran a corner shop and started a mail order business selling clothing to motor bikers, both of which were successful, his motorcycle clothing business so much so that the manufacturer for a period refused to sell him stock because he was outperforming established retailers.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Baton Rouge (/ˌbætən ˈruːʒ/; French for "Red Stick", French: Bâton-Rouge [bɑtɔ̃ ʁuʒ]) is the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana and its second-largest city. The seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, the city is located on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.

As the "Capital City", Baton Rouge is the political hub for Louisiana, and is the second-largest metropolitan city in the state, with an estimated population of 228,895 as of 2014. The metropolitan area surrounding the city, known as Greater Baton Rouge, had a population of 820,159 people as of 2013. The urban area has around 594,309 inhabitants.

Baton Rouge is a major industrial, petrochemical, medical, research, motion picture, and growing technology center of the American South. The Port of Greater Baton Rouge is the tenth largest in the United States in terms of tonnage shipped, and is the farthest upstream Mississippi River port capable of handling Panamax ships.

The Baton Rouge area owes its historical importance to its strategic site upon the Istrouma Bluff, the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi River Delta. This allowed development of a business quarter safe from seasonal flooding. In addition, the city built a levee system stretching from the bluff southward to protect the riverfront and low-lying agricultural areas. The city is a culturally rich center, with settlement by immigrants from numerous European nations and African peoples. It was ruled by seven different governments: French, British, and Spanish in the colonial era, West Floridian, United States territory and state, Confederate, and United States again.