"My favourite working place - is this lectern. It's where I've written many a speech, and developed various reasonable and unreasonable ideas. I can walk around it, I can stand up. I'm not stuck sitting in one place. I can look around in different directions instead of just one. The lectern is my favourite place to work. I found it in a small antiques shop in Zurich -- that is, my wife discovered it -- not me. And I found its size so lovely and practical. Look, its size hasn't changed. Nor has mine. So we both fit well together.It's probably 150 to 180 years old -- nothing spectacular. But it's a nice size -- it's not overwhelming. It fits to my body. That's important as well. I don't disappear behind it, I can stand easily. I can read easily. I don't need my glasses. I can discuss things here; I can lean on it.

I'm chairman of Adecco - the German for chairman is 'stuhlmann.' That's such an appalling word, and I probably like working here so much because I have an aversion to the word chairman'. I had the lectern in the Jacobs Museum in Zurich. Then I brought it here. And how many years have spent writing on it? It's probably been with me for more than 30 or 35 years. The lectern will certainly grow older than I will. In the first place, it's already older than I am, and in the second, it will continue to grow older. And whoever feels good about it later should simply use it and enjoy owning it."