Short-term profit hunger ‘destroyed the planet’: billionaire board member

GENEVA - A member of Swiss drugmaker Roche’s controlling family said on Wednesday that short-term profit maximization has “destroyed the planet” and the world needs a new to his son’s depiction of events, suggesting he sensationalized their relationship in a bid to sell more records.

“I have always been with Drake. I talked to him if not every day, every other day and we really got into a deep conversation about that,” Graham said during Nick Cannon’s “Close Conversations” show. “I said: ‘Drake why are you saying all of this different stuff about me, man? This is not cool.’ And he goes: ‘Dad, it sells records.’” breed of capitalism putting long-term interests first.

Roche vice chairman Andre Hoffman, 61, the scion of the 123-year-old drugmaker’s founder whose family’s stake is worth some $23 billion, said business must set more ambitious goals for reining in human impact.

Hoffmann’s comments won a sudden round of applause from the 900-strong audience of business people at the Building Bridges sustainability summit in Geneva, Switzerland’s French-speaking banking hub.

Hoffmann, an environmentalist, said he understood why activists are impatient for faster climate-change action but he rejected violent protest.

The Extinction Rebellion group has risen to prominence after protests around the world, including in Switzerland. It wants to see politicians and businesses take tougher and swifter steps against climate change.

“I can understand people in the streets gluing themselves to doors,” Hoffmann told Reuters. “Violence should never be allowed, it should not happen. But the fact that people are panicked about the future, I understand that. Today, the company which says, ‘I’m not doing any harm, I’m using resources and activities in a way that doesn’t harm,’ that company is behind the curve,” he said. “We need to be net contributors. We need to repair the damage done. Shortterm profit maximization has destroyed the planet, environmentally and socially.”