Yue Sai is L’Oreal’s troubled Chinese luxury brand. Alexis Perakis-Valat, the new CEO of L’Oréal China, has made it a point of honor to turn the brand around. He has asked Stéphane Wilmet, the brand’s new general manager, to come up with a turnaround plan that will restore L’Oréal’s reputation in China as the world’s best cosmetic marketer.

De Beers has been immensely successful in introducing diamonds to Asians, making three Asian countries, the second, third and fourth largest diamond markets in the world. However, the Asian crisis and the entry into China, raise the fundamental question of whether De Beers’ positioning of diamonds as symbols of love has ever been accepted by Asian women.