Abu Dhabi, UAE
The next stop on my travels was Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where we had recently made a significant investment in an up-and-coming business with high growth potential.
Just as I was leaving Paris, Michael’s PA, Trudy, told me by email that he had instructed her to book me into a particular hotel. It was one that he had not yet been to, and he wanted me to tell him what it was like. “He says that you’re to find the roof bar and tell him what you can see from there.”
When I arrived, the taxi from the airport took me on a looping drive to the Yas Hotel, on Yas Island. I was amazed. Much of the structure was covered with what looked to me like a cloud-shaped web. It was dusk when I arrived, and from some distance away, I could see the entire shape lit up purple. Underneath the cloud, if that is indeed its theme, it turned out that the hotel is two buildings, each an elongated oval shape, one perpendicular to the other.
The hotel sits among...