A too long C.V. or a too short memoir, and acknowledgements

My mother Ingrid is from Sweden and my father Tady was from Poland, and I was born in 1950, in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, close to the Colombian border. By the way, if you would end up thinking I am having an adventurous life let me assure you it’s nothing when compared to that of my parents.

Sweden: After Venezuela, Sweden is undoubtedly the country that has had the most influence on my life, and I will always harbor an immense gratitude to it. It is a truly amazing country, and I pray its future generations really get to understand and appreciate what it has been able to achieve and why they need and should defend their way of doing it over and over again. I am certain that our best chances for the ongoing globalization of the world to end in something good lies completely in the hands of being able to use Sweden (and their neighbors) as shining examples of roads worthy to follow.

Poland: Even though I do not know it (yet), and I do not speak a word of Polish, I have always felt very much identified with my father’s homeland. My third name is Stanislaw, and through it I feel connected to the rebellious spirit and freedom urge of my ancestors. It was indeed one of my proudest moments when I and my daughters received our Polish passports.

The United States of America and I: In a world where everything is radicalizing and so many believe that if you are not 100% for, you have to be 100% against, I need to make a very personal comment about the United States, because I refer to it frequently in this book, given its importance in the world.

My father, as a Polish soldier taken prisoner of war by the Germans, spent five years in concentration camps, from the last of which he was liberated by American soldiers. I was brought up on a pro-American diet and for many years counted To Hell and Back, the 1955 movie that recounted the life of Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier in the Second World War, among my favorites. There is no way on earth that I could suffer from any sort of real anti–United States of America phobia. If I criticize, make recommendations, or observe some things that I believe could be improved in the United States, I always do so as a sincere friend who truly wishes for that much-admired country to live up to those very high standards of which I feel it is capable. And when it doesn’t, I am just a much-saddened friend, but never a foe. The United States should not ignore the fact that out there it has many true friends who truly wish it well. It should never confuse them with all those who are plain bootlickers.

Also, if the ongoing globalization is to stand a chance to end in something good for the world, this will also very much depend on the willingness of the USA to do the right things right. 

But please, do not let the previous comments confuse you … I am foremost and above all a Venezuelan.

Young

My studies started in Venezuela, in a kinder at a catholic nun school, with a 3-boys-to-100 girl ratio, unfortunately at a time when I had yet to grasp the significance of this numerical advantage. My primary school happened in a very small—really tiny—Evangelical school in San Cristóbal. Television had not yet arrived to the region and neither had telephones to Palmira, where we lived. My contacts with the outer world occurred, therefore, through radio and books … but so intensively that CNN never really surprised me.

Youth

From there, at the age of 12, I took off to Sweden to a boarding school in Sigtuna. The school was quite renowned (in Sweden) as their future king of Sweden was studying there. Also, in the closet of my room, Olof Palme, the illustrious and later assassinated Prime Minister of Sweden, had also scribbled his name.

My Andean Pact Trip

In 1966 at age 16 and a week, I took a summer job on a Swedish merchant boat for four months mostly scrubbing dishes and rust. This trip took me from Europe to South America where I visited ports in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Bolivia did not have a port but luckily for me, as the vessel’s name was MS Bolivia, I was able to later argue that it was a full Andean Pact trip. I need not say that this type of summer jobs was not that frequent in my boarding school.

Academics

Between 1969 and 1971, very fast, two years plus many- many summer courses, urging to get back to Venezuela before the tranquility of Sweden got a final grip on me, I graduated as an economist in the University of Lund. 

Back to Caracas, between 1972 and 1974, fulltime immersion at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, IESA, and where I earned my MBA, with distinction. Thereafter I started my professional life, with two initial brief and surrealistic experiences:

Diversifying into the blue

The first, in a local important commercial bank had me going, after just one week, to Panama, to participate in a workshop arranged by their associate, a big international big bank, to discuss the latter’s worldwide diversification strategy … Fortunately, it took us less than an hour to agree that no one of us had the slightest idea of what we were supposed to be doing, so we gave up on the intent, and had a good time over the weekend. (I still remember with much fondness a great show, in a very dingy place, by Daniel Santos, one of the long gone icons of boleros, that beautiful lamenting bluesy tropical musical that had everyone cutting their veins … normally because of non-answered love). 

Some weeks of public … disservice?

Back in the bank, after just another two weeks, and I guess because of my Panama experience, my name was put forward as a candidate for the post of Diversification Manager in the Venezuela Investment Fund that was being created to handle the oil income surpluses of the nation. I entered the Fund its very first day, and I left a couple of weeks later the same day my desk arrived, utterly frustrated when the Fund was requested to analyze, and obviously endorse, the economic feasibility studies of a 4-billion-dollar investment known as the Fourth Plan of SIDOR, the big Venezuelan iron and steel complex. With an “if something goes wrong with this project the Venezuelans might have the right to hang us in Plaza Bolívar, and I’m much too young for that” I slammed the door on the public sector … for the following 28 years.

Riding harvest combines

Urgently back to the real world … although I must say a bit too real for my taste. During the following year I traveled around Venezuela harvesting rice and sorghum, with a fleet of ten beautiful big light-blue combines, all perfectly inadequate for Venezuelan conditions. I got trapped into this when one of the partners in what seemed a viable agribusiness proposal, the agronomical engineer of the group, on the spur of a moment, decided to buy 10 totally untested combines, arguing that by doing so we had won the right for an exclusive representation of that brand in Venezuela. As we were never able to reduce the droppings of the combine to less than 20%, I guess it was pure beginner’s luck that we did not combine our problems by using these rights and selling these combines to others. Being that the concept of an MBA was quite new in Venezuela and no one really knew what they were for, least I, the group deemed me to be the right universal tool to get it out of its serious predicament … and so they sent me out as their line manager, all over Venezuela. 

Back to harbor … or new frontiers

A year later, tired of being pursued by angry farmers, I cut my losses, not by far short enough, and with a substantial negative balance (zero assets and a lot of debt) I went to do what an MBA is suppose to do, manage, for big bucks, other peoples companies. In a few years I managed to turn into an eminent financial leasing company expert and even the manager of one. In this I was greatly assisted by the fact that few in Venezuela really knew what leasing was all about … which gave me a lot of leeway

Personal blessings

I did well. Not only did I manage to repay my debts but also, most importantly, I married Mercedes. Besides being a wonderful wife and mother, Mercedes is an excellent lawyer with 20 years of corporate experience in Venezuela, recently overhauled with an LLM from Georgetown University. Besides, she also moonlights, for free, as my Spanish editor. To round up this personal paragraph let me say that Mercedes and I have been blessed with three beautiful and most talented daughters, Mercedes, Alexandra and Adriana, and who also, when push comes to shove, stand in as great friends. As the only man in the house, I have been staged in the role of the gentle and good World Bank, while Mercedes, poor her, has to play … and be … the strict IMF.

Learning how not to bike

I made some splash with my statement of learning how to bike during the debates about using Country Systems. Therefore I believe I should confess here (in an appendix) that my youngest daughter, Adriana, set out to bike with her roller skates on—and crashed. We had to look in the dark for her two front teeth and, instructed through cell phone by my favorite dentist, my brother Sven, I reinserted them. I got it wrong the first time, so I had to take them out and do it again. But, don’t worry, Adriana’s fine. Her confidence did not take a beating; she stills bikes, but does not rollerblade, at least not simultaneously. As for me, I had the type of experience you just don’t really need as a father. 

An intermezzo

From mid 1979 until mid 1980, before the girls were born my wife and I also took a year out in London. There I practiced at Kleinwort and Benson, one of the truly old English Merchant Banks that has since then, as so many others, gone down, disappeared or been diluted, in the oceans of globalization. During this year I also had the chance to attend London School of Economics, as a listener to International Commerce and take the Corporate Finance Evening Course at London Business School. I made some money investing in currency futures … but I got out of it … as I did not see a real win-win opportunity in it … more the contrary.

Financial brewer

Back in Venezuela, by mid 1980, I signed up as Finance Director for a brewery that was facing serious troubles as their market share was dropping from 30% to 8%, over few months, so fast that it finally could not service, even the first quarterly installment of a huge international bank syndicated loan. The scandal, not of my doing, resulted in the first real Chapter 11 type of proceedings ever initiated in Venezuela for a public listed company, and helped me (and some others) build a small reputation in work-outs.

At last my niche

In 1983, I had had enough doing just one thing all the time, and so I entered into private consultancy, that allowed me to suggest other people what to do … all of their time. 

From then until 2002, I enjoyed 19 years of great and varied experience. In areas of hotels, resorts, industries, hospitals, aluminum, oranges, chemicals, real estate, paper, printing … and so on. Mostly for local clients, but also for some multinationals, some which even led me to negotiate a deal with IFC during the early nineties. I worked mostly in traditional corporate financial and strategic planning and marketing, but I also got seriously into some exotic products such as debt equity conversions. I worked mostly in Venezuela, but also managed to get some interesting assignments in Colombia. 

Mangoes

With the aid of friends, I dappled in some ventures and one of them was exporting mangoes. We actually managed to get into Harrods’ delicacy department with our beautiful multicolored and individually wrapped mangoes and we were doing great … until. Our largest individual cost was the airfreight to London, that we had to pay in advance and so when a finance minister woke up in Venezuela and announced, that according to him, the Bolivar was undervalued and then he executivized it from 36 to 24 to the dollar (something perfectly feasible in the short term in an oil country) the day before we were to convert into Bolivars all our British Pounds, he bombed our cash flow. Having to fight against the mosquito in the mangoes or the flight schedules of British Airways was one thing, having also to fight against the ego of a finance minister, was just too much.

Teaching

For a very brief moment, 1974-75 I taught corporate finance at Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas. Also at IESA, I shared for a couple of years the responsibility of lecturing in International Finance. Teaching has always attracted me but somehow no one ever baited me irresistibly enough. Even nowadays, I still toy with the idea of going back to get my PHD, not because I am truly convinced about it, but because it seems to have turned into an obligatory requirement for allowing you to either teach or research. (Might there be a market opportunity for a University principled on No Ph.D.s allowed?)

Bank representative

For about 10 years I acted as the representative in Venezuela for the O’Higgins Bank of Chile, later Banco the Santiago … until the Banco Santander of Spain purchased the Chilean bank and globalized me out of a nice and cozy relation. During those years I had the chance of frequently going to Chile and study their real and their not so real progress. While doing so, I had to hear so much hoopla about their social security system that I guess I developed some antibodies that might currently affect how I look on this whole issue. Nonetheless, I do admire many of their other efforts and I wish them all of the best as they are really great people. 

Almost banking

As the Chile representation was almost a sideline, and as the name correctly indicates, mainly a representation, I never actually worked in real banking. That said, I had a lot to do with many banks, developing for some great strategic plans that were never executed, and holding the hand of others in difficult times such as interventions. These close but afar relationships with the banks and their clients, is what inspired me later to set out on my Get-Basel-Bank Regulations-Under-Control mini crusade.

Honduras & Guatemala

A friend, Christopher Jennings whom I had met when the company he worked for was trying to get the mandate to operate the Caracas water system and I initially handled this quest, made it to the Inter-American Development Bank. From there he called out for assistance in setting up the financial mechanism of some water projects plus some other tidbits and I will always be very grateful for these opportunities, as they became the looking glasses with which a private sector man like me could peek into the public ... and opine. Many of my Central American experiences were made much more enjoyable through the great support I always received from Ian Walker and all his associates in ESA Consultores.

Writing

In July 1997 I suddenly got the chance to write some articles … and have them published. This turned out to be a blessing. Not only was the writing an escape valve that released the pressure I felt as an unsatisfied citizen in a country with very unsatisfactory showings, but also a very energizing tool as it forced me to get close to what was going on in the world as large. Soon I will have written four hundred articles and I might have a loyal following that, unfortunately, does not always guarantee the inclusion of my three daughters … Daddy what have you been writing about lately?

Music

I cannot come close to describing my life without including some lines about music. I play the guitar and harmonica … as a totally self-taught amateur … who is at his best when there is no real musician close by as a reference … and I love it. In fact there was a time when my sound engineer (Mercedes, my wife) and I escaped to the Island of Margarita over weekends so that I could play incognito for foreign tourists at a small hotel where I as a small shareholder could exercise some influence. Once after my concert (concert … no understatement there), I was tipped by a German tourist, and I still remember that as a very proud moment … by the way, my sound engineer was also once approached in terms of what she would be doing after she got off her duties. During three consecutive years, I participated in a choir at my alma mater IESA, twice a week, from 6 to 8 p.m. … what a lovely way to catch up with life. At the World Bank, to help show that we EDs could also be “somewhat” human, I could not resist Tara Sharafudeen’s very insistent invitation to participate in the Celebration of Cultures show with my guitar and my harmonica. Because of logistical considerations, it had to be during an Asian show where I, among a lot of participants from India, sang about Venezuela … I defended the whole mix up by advancing the thesis that India was quite naturally doing a little bit of musical outsourcing to South America.

And that was when …

In August 2002, the Planning Minister of Venezuela, Dr. Felipe Perez, a man who, I feel, deeply believes in transparency, local participation … and open systems (Linux), communicated, on the Web, about Venezuela’s turn to nominate an ED in the World Bank, asking for candidates. With probably unwarranted but still unchecked optimism, I went for it.

CV Acknowledgements

There is no way I could write this type of CV memoir without also including my thanks to the rest of my family and some very special friends. First of all Fredrik, my younger brother, who by relieving me of many of the older-brother-duties, helps me to travel lighter in life and also Sven and Karin, my still younger siblings, without whom family would not remotely be family. From my Sweden of so many years ago, I still feel next to me Klas Gierow, Otto Ramel, Lars Henriksson, and Anders Hedborg. Of course there are others from the opposite sex, whom I have not forgotten, but here I am perhaps better off by cryptically referring to a Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias song. From my professional years in Venezuela there’s no way I can get by without mentioning Jose Manuel Egui and Antonio Iszak. And through my years as consultant, what would I have done without my partners in crime, Daniel Boersner and Rafael Lorenzo. Let me also give some special thanks to all of Mercedes’ family. Her father, Jose Antonio Cordido-Freytes, a young judge in Venezuela, officially married my parents soon sixty years ago … talk about conspiracy theories … and her mother, Eva Mercedes stands out as a model for the mother in law you all would have killed for. 

Finally I must acknowledge the great help received in putting together this book from my editor in chief, James T. McDonough, Jr., and his personal editor, his wife Zaida. As he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on The Structural Metrics of the Iliad and among his many editorial credits lists a World Dictionary of Foreign Expressions and a couple of medical dictionaries, I found him perfectly suited to guide me through a globalization book without taking any of my uttering for granted. I let many of his comments be a part of the book without even talking about copyright issues with him. I guess that if we run into some problems, we can both count on Zaida and Mercedes to bail us out.