Warsaw carjacking sets off alarms

Nicole Troupe and her two young children were leaving a Warsaw shopping center when gunmen pointed pistols at her head. She and the kids escaped unharmed from the harrowing experience; P&G bigwigs now have 24-hour guards.
Gary Granai of American International Business Group says thieves now are targeting offices with high-tech equipment. He should know: his entire building was burglarized. It was a false alarm at the U.S. residence last Saturday, when guards went into high gear upon finding a brown-paper bundle at the gate. It turned out to be dry cleaning.
* * * *
Moving on: Allan Hirst, who opened the Citibank office here in 1991, will stay in Warsaw but now heads new operations in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel and Pakistan. His successor, Marshall Polk, is awaiting approval from the National Bank of Poland.
Robert Burgess, who has headed Price Waterhouse here since 1992, is off to Moscow. His replacement, Peter Driscoll, spent two and a half years here from early 1991, then started the tax division in Budapest.
Ian Hume has parted ways with Ameritech, where he was vice president for business development, as the company sues the Polish government over the GSM bidding flap.
And a top dual-profession couple is leaving. Bob Lepkowski quit venture capital firm Renaissance Partners, which he founded nearly two years ago, and will follow his wife, Jan Davis, to Chicago. Davis is vice president and general manager of list development for Trans Union, a national credit bureau. Davis says Poland is tough on professional "trailing spouses." She had owned a direct-mail company and hoped to explore data-based marketing here, but the U.S. backers decided there was more money at home. She consulted for Gillette and Office Depot here but found most jobs "much more junior than what I was accustomed to. And I think the new rules on work permits will make it worse." Her advice to "trailing spouses," male or female: line up work before you come or expect to be treated as a "local hire" with salaries in four, not six digits.
* * * *
Teresa Pugh of BB&P has a hit in her third publishing venture: a mass-circulation health magazine, "Teraz Zdrowie," with circulation at 450,000 for the second issue this month.
Six daily regional newspapers distribute the magazine, which is the first of four which Pugh plans to publish, with newspapers able to offer one each week to boost mid-week circulation.
"We're adding Dziennik Polski in Krakow as of the third issue and are expecting to add Gdansk for the fourth," she said, pushing circulation to 500,000, and other papers not on their target list are trying to get on her expansion list.
Launching a mass-circulation magazine is a high-risk, costly venture with highly-financed German publications saturating the market, Pugh says, but she's gambling that her efficient, low-cost system will beat the odds. "We guarantee our advertisers that they won't get more than 20% returned copies - versus 40% to 50% unsold copies for a normal launch."
The newspapers are Express Wieczorny in Warsaw; Trybuna Slaska in Katowice; Slowo Polskie in Wroclaw; Gazeta Poznanska in Poznan; Gazeta Pomorska in Bydgoszcz and Nowiny in Rzeszow.