Ven cap firm flexes muscle to get board seat
The Frenchmen at Pernod Ricard shouldn't count their chickens too early in their attempt to get total control of publicly traded food producer Agros.
U.S.-owned Emerging Ventures, a minority shareholder in Agros, last week was planning to use an expected move by Pernod to install one of its own ven cap team on the supervisory board.
At issue for venture capitalist Emerging Ventures is finding a way to bolster its position as a minority shareholder. Pernod holds a 37% ownership stake and 74% of the voting rights in Agros. Emerging Ventures has 21% of Agros shares but only 10% of the voting rights.
Emerging Ventures' game plan last week was to vote against adding a Pernod Ricard member to the board at Friday's meeting, according to the ven cap firm.
"Then we will be calling for an extraordinary meeting of shareholders in which we will request group voting," David Seidman, who heads Emerging Ventures.
Under the commercial code's group-voting procedure, the percent ownership of share capital should be reflected in an equivalent percent representation on the supervisory board. Then Emerging Ventures would get a seat on the board and "that would put us inside the tent," Seidman said.
He added that "our interest is in special-value situations when we find them. We felt that the Agros stock was, and is, cheap, because the picture is unclear and a result of some considerable losses over the last couple of years. We believe that the worst is behind them and we're looking at a situation that doesn't really reflect investment opportunities."
And what about the fund's relationship with Agros CEO Zofia Gaber? "She didn't seek us out, but is not wholly uncooperative," he said.
Mary Pininska is making waves with her new book, "Another Landscape Revealed: A Culinary View of the Polish Countryside." It is published in the United States by Hippocrene in Polish and English. It features dishes from the pre-communist past (i.e., before menus were centrally planned along with the economy) and gourmet meals prepared regularly by the Bristol Hotel's chef, Bernard Luissiana.
Pininska said she found the U.S. market more receptive to a book on elegant Polish cuisine than publishers in her native England. She was slated for a U.S. book tour this fall. With its poems and full-color photos, "Another Landscape Revealed" is as much a coffee-table book slated for a holiday gift as it is for actual kitchen cooking.
Pininska is the public relations manager for the Bristol and the hotel's General Manager Bernie Gassenbauer.
Basil Wajdowicz and Wojciech Hydzyk took honors in the jazz competition sponsored by the network of International Schools. They attend the American School of Warsaw where music teacher and producer Mhairi MacInnes encouraged them to enter. MacInnes then escorted the two to Brussels to pick up their prizes two weeks ago.
Basil celebrated his 15th birthday just before learning he had won with a surprise party put on by his buddies, said Michael Rabinovitz, one of them. Basil learned the ropes of jazz in New York before coming to Poland with his emigre mom, fashion designer Innocenta Wajdowicz.
Hydzyk was one of the leads in last spring's highly acclaimed original musical that MacInnes wrote and directed; much of the magic came from the music, both classical and jazz with Wajdowicz starring on the piano.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a media analysis about this year's "lessons learned" insights from a decade of transition a conference held here last month. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) bureaucrats from Washington apparently wanted to keep any insights for the insiders.
The big-name keynote speeches were open to the media but a dozen issue-oriented, nuts-and-bolts "breakout" discussions were closed. These included one talk on decentralization and good governance, with Polish Constitutional Court Judge Jerzy Stepien, and another concerning the best model for new financial institutions, with Deloitte&Touche chairman Leslaw Paga.
Neither Bill Frej, the USAID director for Poland, nor Donald Pressley, former Polish USAID chief and now USAID bigwig for Europe and Eurasia, knew about the no-media policy until the conference was nearly over.
