Word: localitis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2000
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Companies like BMW that are willing to take a big plunge into Russia's uncertainties are still rare enough to win admiration from Moscow's financial experts, who have a good understanding of the tough local business climate. "Yeltsin's retirement is certainly good news, but Russia still lacks good corporate governance and a viable legal infrastructure," says Bill Browder, founder and head of the Hermitage Fund, which has been one of the leading players in the Russian market. Since August 1998, when the country suddenly devalued the ruble and defaulted on $40 billion in foreign debt, notes Browder, "Russia...
...foreign companies now forging ahead, nearly all have joined forces with solid local firms with existing factories or other hard assets. And nearly all have chosen corners of Russia where the investment climate seems better protected from the political storms that buffet the country at large. Leningrad Oblast, the province surrounding St. Petersburg, is a favorite. In the town of Tosno, 30 miles south of Russia's second city, Caterpillar has just completed its biggest investment in 25 years in Russia--a $50 million factory to make component parts for its European assembly plants and also put together tractors...
...shows, hurdles are there to be leaped. Along with the German automaker last year, Ikea, Nestle, Caterpillar, Lucent Technologies, Ford Motor Co., Gillette and Philip Morris quietly added to their investments--nearly all built production plants with local partners, pouring more than half a billion dollars in direct foreign investment into Russia. In all cases, investors have developed a range of protection plans to help ensure that they prosper, even if that word is somewhat loosely defined...
...holds up a fat sprig of marijuana buds and points out the crystals of dried resin that sparkle like tiny diamonds in the flat winter sunlight. These crystals make the local pot, which has been perfected through indoor growing under virtual laboratory conditions, twice as potent as competing varieties from Northern California and Oregon and six times as strong as most common Colombian and Mexican products. "This," Emery says, smiling at the minty-smelling weed, "is the top of the market." Across town, Dave Williams, an investigator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, agrees--but he's not smiling. "British...
...peril, she's in debt to a loan shark, and her best friend has breast cancer. But Agnes Browne, played by the director, remains essentially, somewhat improbably, undaunted. She cheerfully runs her fruit and vegetable stall in an outdoor Dublin market, allows herself to be flirted with by the local baker, yearns for tickets to a Tom Jones concert (the year is 1967). Not that we want for another lesson in the need to be chipper in adversity, but there are a reserve and a realism in Huston's work that make her very modest film more affecting than...