Word: american
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Nobody will be following OPEC'S maneuverings in Caracas this week more closely than the executives of a highly secretive oil Goliath that many people have never heard of. The Arabian American Oil Co., or Aramco, is the Delaware-based firm that is jointly owned by Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Standard Oil Co. of California. Under a geographic concession nearly as large as the state of Oklahoma, Aramco pumps almost all the oil that flows from the Croesus-rich fields of Saudi Arabia. But in Riyadh and Washington alike, Aramco is now feeling heat...
...their middleman role, Aramco's American chiefs plainly have divided loyalties. From Chairman John J. Kelberer, a career-long Aramco engineering manager, on down, executives remain determined to do nothing that would anger their Saudi hosts or jeopardize the company's concession. During the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, Aramco's executives not only did as they were told by the Saudi government, but cut back production by more than requested just to show that they were good Saudi corporate citizens...
...subsidiary of the Squibb Corp., the U.S. pharmaceutical firm, which pays the Yves Saint Laurent fashion house a royalty in return for the use of its name. More galling to the French, Opium is a strong scent; it thus follows in the style of the brash and popular American perfumes, like Revlon's Charlie and Jontue, that are edging out long dominant French brands as the leading sellers in West Germany, Britain and Switzerland, among other markets. Tellingly, Guerlain's Nahema and many other new French scents are potent perfumes in the U.S. style...
Some French fashion chiefs are indignant. Robert Ricci complains that the assertive American-type perfumes should "only appeal to jet-setters who want to shock." Lanvin's marketing director, Jean-Louis Delpuech, scoffs that U.S. perfume makers have tended "to go 'down market' to a type of woman who demands more smell for her money." But others are more philosophical about the demand for perfumes with staying power. Robert Young, president of Yves Saint Laurent perfumes, traces the taste for strong fragrances to the same craving for identity that makes people want designer names on their clothes...
What seems to concern the French as much as the spread of the American scent is the expansion of American ownership of perfume houses. Coty, for instance, is owned by the Pfizer pharmaceutical firm, Pierre Balmain by Revlon, and Jean d'Albret by Max Factor. Globally, sales of U.S.-owned perfume firms exceeded $1 billion last year, compared with $737 million for the French. Girding themselves against further U.S. competition, many older French perfume houses have sought mergers with larger European corporations, and a long moribund national perfume-promoting organization called Prestige has been revived. Says Bernard Lanvin, head...