Brenda Stein
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2006
- Posts
- 538
You guys just crack me up! Go ahead and hate them for making it in this world when odds are completly stacked against them. Jews are risk takers if you hadn’t noticed. To those pathetic individuals who sit in their one-room shacks wishing they could be somebody, take a lesson from hard working, ambitious people and get up off your couch and be somebody! Or better yet, step aside and just shut the fuck up!
Israeli Investors Find Opportunity In Romanian Roots Children of Holocaust Arrive To Modernize Bucharest
By JOEL MILLMAN
October 4, 2006; Page A1
BUCHAREST -- In 1993, Moshe Arbel returned to Romania, 45 years after he arrived in Israel with thousands of other children orphaned by the Holocaust. He found his mother's grave, hired caretakers to maintain it for $12 a month, and spotted something else -- opportunity.
Romania was a country stirring to life economically after the fall of communism, he told his employer, Givat Haim, a kibbutz that makes Prigat-brand fruit juice. "I said, 'Back me and I'll make money in Romania.' They said, 'Romania? There's more money in Netanya [a nearby town] than in all of Romania.' Meshuga -- crazy -- they called me," Mr. Arbel recalls.
With a $175,000 loan from the kibbutz, the 63-year-old marketing specialist began bottling Prigat fruit juices in Romania, turning the brand into the country's top seller. This summer, he sold the Romanian unit for about $7 million to PepsiAmericas, a Minneapolis-based bottler.
In a historical twist, the children of the Romanian Holocaust are playing a leading role in modernizing the land of their parents' tragedy. Israeli expatriates have started local businesses in agriculture, retailing, real estate and heavy construction. Branch offices of firms based in Tel Aviv and Haifa handle everything from hotel management to insurance to car leasing. Many of the office parks and shopping malls rising in Bucharest's suburbs are being financed by Israeli hedge funds, while Israeli engineering firms are managing European Union road and water projects in the countryside.
The Israeli presence is so large that Bucharest hotel lobbies and restaurants buzz with Hebrew speakers. On Thursday nights, the two-hour flights between Bucharest and Tel Aviv are packed with Israeli business commuters heading home for family weekends -- and Israeli gamblers bound for Bucharest's casinos, four of which are operated by Israeli entrepreneurs. Israeli licensees in Romania market Kodak film, Pepsi and Cadbury Schweppes soft drinks and Tuborg beer.
Businessmen here estimate that Israelis have invested as much as $2 billion in Romania over the past 15 years, a huge sum given Israel's population of six million. Much of the investment has been routed through third countries, mainly in Western Europe, to take advantage of tax deals. Counting such indirect investment, Romania ranks with the U.S., China, India and Western Europe as a top destination for Israeli capital, says the nation's commercial attaché in Bucharest.
For Israel, whose trade with its Arab neighbors is limited, Romania represents a growth market. Apart from catering to a Romanian market of 22 million, Israeli firms located here can take advantage of regional trade pacts to export duty-free throughout Europe. Starting Jan. 1, when Romania joins the EU, the estimated 30,000 Israelis who also have Romanian citizenship will gain EU citizenship and ultimately be able to work, study and travel freely across Europe.
As a result, thousands more Israelis are queueing up for joint citizenship. "We call them 'born-again Romanians,' " jokes Michael Faint, an animal-feed merchant from the United Kingdom based in Bucharest.
Romania benefits, too, from the Israeli connection. Israelis provide money and technical expertise to a nation that must build its economy to EU standards. Israeli agricultural companies play an especially large role in revamping Romania's farm sector, which was set back by Communist-era mismanagement. "Israeli companies are helping to make a modern Romania," says Jose Iacobescu of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania, who says that Israeli firms employ between 150,000 and 200,000 Romanians.
Tangled History
Israel and Romania have a tangled history. During World War II, Romania was ruled for two years by the fascist Iron Guard, but was one of the few Axis supporters never occupied by German troops. Due to shifting borders, 200,000 Romanian Jews were living in Soviet territory when Hitler's forces invaded, and many died.
Yet 350,000 Romanian Jews survived. Most migrated to Israel, where they so dominated their new society that much of what is considered traditionally Israeli has Romanian origins, including Israel's national folk dance, the hora. Under the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania was the one Soviet-bloc nation that never broke ties with Israel. The two states even collaborated on intelligence matters.
However, lingering anti-Semitism still makes Romania a tricky place for Jews to do business. Last December, an ultranationalist group, Dacia Nemuritoare ("Immortal Dacia," Romania's Bronze Age name), listed the country's top Jewish entrepreneurs and the law firms and banks they work with. A weekly publication of a right-wing minority party, Greater Romania, published a column last year that claimed that Jews with dual citizenship were planning a stealth "depopulation" of the country by dismantling the public-health system and forcing natives to emigrate for work.
Worried about being targets of prejudice, some religious Israelis doff their yarmulkes upon arrival in Bucharest. Many companies register offshore, which obscures their Israeli roots. Strauss International Ltd., a well-known Israeli chocolate maker, sells Romania's leading brand of roasted coffee, called Elite. Its Romanian operation is part of its Amsterdam-registered subsidiary. "Romanians are completely unaware of the Jewish origin" of these brands, says Stefan Liute, a Romanian who works for Grapefruit, a Bucharest brand consultant.
Indeed, Prigat researchers discovered that many Romanians think the brand name, which means "fruit of the wine press" in Hebrew, dates to Romania's pre-Communist era. But Mr. Arbel, the company's head, says account representatives faced resistance from some Lebanese and Syrian restaurateurs who have flocked to Bucharest.
Romanian-born Israelis began returning in great numbers around 1990. The post-Communist government published lists of about 9,000 properties, including hundreds of factories and hotels, that were seized either by Nazi sympathizers after 1940 or by Communists after 1948. Israelis filed claims for lost holdings, as did ethnic Hungarians, Germans and other groups. So far, more than 200,000 claims have been made, and about 80,000 have been adjudicated. Romania doesn't categorize them by ethnicity.
Successful claimants often flipped Bucharest properties to Israeli developers, who spruced them up for sale to Austrian, German, Greek and Italian businessmen entering the country. Israelis with dual citizenship were also buyers, benefiting from a government policy that encouraged sales to Romanians living abroad, says Jacob Fonea, a dentist from Haifa who today heads the Romanian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Fonea, who was born in Iasí near the Soviet border, was unable to regain factories once owned by his family. But he remained in Romania and founded the AIE Group, which bought a former state-owned woolens weaver and a bankrupt tableware company, among other firms, and now exports a variety of goods to Europe. He says AIE has annual sales of around $100 million and employs some 7,000 Romanians.
Israelis of Romanian descent created a web of businesses. When Prigat needed a juice bottler, it turned to Amraz Ltd., Israel's largest producer of plastic containers, which set up a local factory. Now Amraz is exporting plastic bottles into Croatia and France.
Similarly, Israeli architects work for Israeli developers who hire Israeli construction firms across the country. Israeli hedge funds are buying farmland to be managed by Israeli agronomists who tap Israeli kibbutz members to run farms. Romanian authorities say there are about 3,500 companies registered in Israel that do business here. There are another 2,000 Romanian businesses owned by Israelis but registered in third countries, according to diplomats and businessmen.
These close commercial ties date back to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. Israeli contractors reconditioned Soviet-supplied MiG fighters for Romania's air force and later, with U.S. permission, sold surplus U.S. F-16s to Romania.
At the same time, many Romanians headed to Israel for jobs when their country plummeted into recession during the 1990s, and Palestinian unrest prompted Israel to rely less on Arab laborers and recruit guest workers abroad. Eventually about 200,000 Romanians joined Thais, Chinese and Filipinos working in Israel. Bucharest now bustles with Hebrew-speaking cab drivers who bought their vehicles with cash earned in Israel. Hebrew-speaking Romanians became a ready work force for returning Jews.
With Romania's economy growing at 5.6% a year over the past five years -- twice as fast as Israel's -- the country has become a magnet for ambitious young Israelis who feel stifled at home. "Our country is saturated," complains Moran Morgenshtern, a 32-year-old veterinarian who worked this summer breeding heifers in Romania. "If I ever want to run my own farm, I'll probably do it here."
Ms. Morgenshtern's employer, Tnuva Central Cooperative for the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Israel Ltd., is Israel's largest food concern. Founded as a dairy cooperative in 1926, Tnuva today has a 70% share of the Israeli market and now looks abroad to expand. Romania has a special lure: Once it joins the EU, it will get immediate access to the huge European dairy market, which Israel has had little luck in cracking, so long as Romanian producers can meet EU sanitary and food-safety standards.
Tnuva says it can meet those standards and help Romanian farms do the same. It also cautions Romanian farmers that if they can't boost their agricultural productivity, they will be swamped with cheaper agricultural imports from more efficient farms in Western Europe. "I warn the Romanian people, 'Follow me or else you will end up slaves of the West,' " says Yoram Israeli, a 55-year-old, former kibbutz member who runs Tnuva Romania, and who is jokingly called "Moses" around his Bucharest office.
Two-Stage Strategy
Mr. Israeli has a two-stage strategy. First, Tnuva is building a yogurt-processing plant in Romania to make and sell Yoplait yogurt with milk produced locally. (Tnuva already licenses and sells Yoplait, a French brand, in Israel.) Afterward, Tnuva hopes to sell Romanian dairy products throughout Europe.
This year, Tnuva bought its first Romanian farm, a former Communist collective near the village of Adunatti Copãceni, and imported a herd of 1,200 dairy cows from Germany. A few weeks before the first cows arrived, workers, many Romanian gypsies, restored concrete barns that had been stripped of metal fixtures, including roofs, by local scavengers. Israelis cleaned the site thoroughly after inspectors discovered leucosis bacteria in pools of stagnant water. That could have infected dairy cows and disqualified their milk for sale.
The Israelis sought local dairymen who can meet EU standards. Next, Tnuva hopes to persuade co-op members to advise local farmers, invest in Romanian dairies and share technical know-how. "It's like playing matchmaker," says Rafi Shaul, the Tnuva executive in charge of hunting for local partners.
Mr. Shaul, a chain-smoker with a thinning gray ponytail, works with Costel Caras, a 48-year-old Bucharest native who began farming in 1994. Mr. Caras turns to Mr. Shaul for advice on everything from how to mix feed to how to qualify for EU farm aid.
Tramping through an overgrown pasture in July, Mr. Shaul praised Mr. Caras's placement of a concrete corral and the cleanliness of his herd's stalls. He winced at the sight of Mr. Caras's creaking water pump. "Some of these farms," Mr. Shaul muttered, "look like Israel 50 years ago."
Later, over a lunch of Romanian cheese and eggplant snacks, Mr. Caras complained that a wholesaler twice neglected to make pickups at his farm, forcing him to dump his product. If that keeps happening, he'll go broke.
Tnuva competes here from France's Groupe Danone SA and the Netherlands' Friesland Foods. Mr. Shaul said he suspects brokers may be punishing Mr. Caras for working with Tnuva. Mr. Shaul advised the farmer to be careful.
"Don't worry about me. I am a free man," the Romanian said. "We need Tnuva. We don't want just one buyer here."
Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com
Israeli Investors Find Opportunity In Romanian Roots Children of Holocaust Arrive To Modernize Bucharest
By JOEL MILLMAN
October 4, 2006; Page A1
BUCHAREST -- In 1993, Moshe Arbel returned to Romania, 45 years after he arrived in Israel with thousands of other children orphaned by the Holocaust. He found his mother's grave, hired caretakers to maintain it for $12 a month, and spotted something else -- opportunity.
Romania was a country stirring to life economically after the fall of communism, he told his employer, Givat Haim, a kibbutz that makes Prigat-brand fruit juice. "I said, 'Back me and I'll make money in Romania.' They said, 'Romania? There's more money in Netanya [a nearby town] than in all of Romania.' Meshuga -- crazy -- they called me," Mr. Arbel recalls.
With a $175,000 loan from the kibbutz, the 63-year-old marketing specialist began bottling Prigat fruit juices in Romania, turning the brand into the country's top seller. This summer, he sold the Romanian unit for about $7 million to PepsiAmericas, a Minneapolis-based bottler.
In a historical twist, the children of the Romanian Holocaust are playing a leading role in modernizing the land of their parents' tragedy. Israeli expatriates have started local businesses in agriculture, retailing, real estate and heavy construction. Branch offices of firms based in Tel Aviv and Haifa handle everything from hotel management to insurance to car leasing. Many of the office parks and shopping malls rising in Bucharest's suburbs are being financed by Israeli hedge funds, while Israeli engineering firms are managing European Union road and water projects in the countryside.
The Israeli presence is so large that Bucharest hotel lobbies and restaurants buzz with Hebrew speakers. On Thursday nights, the two-hour flights between Bucharest and Tel Aviv are packed with Israeli business commuters heading home for family weekends -- and Israeli gamblers bound for Bucharest's casinos, four of which are operated by Israeli entrepreneurs. Israeli licensees in Romania market Kodak film, Pepsi and Cadbury Schweppes soft drinks and Tuborg beer.
Businessmen here estimate that Israelis have invested as much as $2 billion in Romania over the past 15 years, a huge sum given Israel's population of six million. Much of the investment has been routed through third countries, mainly in Western Europe, to take advantage of tax deals. Counting such indirect investment, Romania ranks with the U.S., China, India and Western Europe as a top destination for Israeli capital, says the nation's commercial attaché in Bucharest.
For Israel, whose trade with its Arab neighbors is limited, Romania represents a growth market. Apart from catering to a Romanian market of 22 million, Israeli firms located here can take advantage of regional trade pacts to export duty-free throughout Europe. Starting Jan. 1, when Romania joins the EU, the estimated 30,000 Israelis who also have Romanian citizenship will gain EU citizenship and ultimately be able to work, study and travel freely across Europe.
As a result, thousands more Israelis are queueing up for joint citizenship. "We call them 'born-again Romanians,' " jokes Michael Faint, an animal-feed merchant from the United Kingdom based in Bucharest.
Romania benefits, too, from the Israeli connection. Israelis provide money and technical expertise to a nation that must build its economy to EU standards. Israeli agricultural companies play an especially large role in revamping Romania's farm sector, which was set back by Communist-era mismanagement. "Israeli companies are helping to make a modern Romania," says Jose Iacobescu of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania, who says that Israeli firms employ between 150,000 and 200,000 Romanians.
Tangled History
Israel and Romania have a tangled history. During World War II, Romania was ruled for two years by the fascist Iron Guard, but was one of the few Axis supporters never occupied by German troops. Due to shifting borders, 200,000 Romanian Jews were living in Soviet territory when Hitler's forces invaded, and many died.
Yet 350,000 Romanian Jews survived. Most migrated to Israel, where they so dominated their new society that much of what is considered traditionally Israeli has Romanian origins, including Israel's national folk dance, the hora. Under the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania was the one Soviet-bloc nation that never broke ties with Israel. The two states even collaborated on intelligence matters.
However, lingering anti-Semitism still makes Romania a tricky place for Jews to do business. Last December, an ultranationalist group, Dacia Nemuritoare ("Immortal Dacia," Romania's Bronze Age name), listed the country's top Jewish entrepreneurs and the law firms and banks they work with. A weekly publication of a right-wing minority party, Greater Romania, published a column last year that claimed that Jews with dual citizenship were planning a stealth "depopulation" of the country by dismantling the public-health system and forcing natives to emigrate for work.
Worried about being targets of prejudice, some religious Israelis doff their yarmulkes upon arrival in Bucharest. Many companies register offshore, which obscures their Israeli roots. Strauss International Ltd., a well-known Israeli chocolate maker, sells Romania's leading brand of roasted coffee, called Elite. Its Romanian operation is part of its Amsterdam-registered subsidiary. "Romanians are completely unaware of the Jewish origin" of these brands, says Stefan Liute, a Romanian who works for Grapefruit, a Bucharest brand consultant.
Indeed, Prigat researchers discovered that many Romanians think the brand name, which means "fruit of the wine press" in Hebrew, dates to Romania's pre-Communist era. But Mr. Arbel, the company's head, says account representatives faced resistance from some Lebanese and Syrian restaurateurs who have flocked to Bucharest.
Romanian-born Israelis began returning in great numbers around 1990. The post-Communist government published lists of about 9,000 properties, including hundreds of factories and hotels, that were seized either by Nazi sympathizers after 1940 or by Communists after 1948. Israelis filed claims for lost holdings, as did ethnic Hungarians, Germans and other groups. So far, more than 200,000 claims have been made, and about 80,000 have been adjudicated. Romania doesn't categorize them by ethnicity.
Successful claimants often flipped Bucharest properties to Israeli developers, who spruced them up for sale to Austrian, German, Greek and Italian businessmen entering the country. Israelis with dual citizenship were also buyers, benefiting from a government policy that encouraged sales to Romanians living abroad, says Jacob Fonea, a dentist from Haifa who today heads the Romanian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.
Dr. Fonea, who was born in Iasí near the Soviet border, was unable to regain factories once owned by his family. But he remained in Romania and founded the AIE Group, which bought a former state-owned woolens weaver and a bankrupt tableware company, among other firms, and now exports a variety of goods to Europe. He says AIE has annual sales of around $100 million and employs some 7,000 Romanians.
Israelis of Romanian descent created a web of businesses. When Prigat needed a juice bottler, it turned to Amraz Ltd., Israel's largest producer of plastic containers, which set up a local factory. Now Amraz is exporting plastic bottles into Croatia and France.
Similarly, Israeli architects work for Israeli developers who hire Israeli construction firms across the country. Israeli hedge funds are buying farmland to be managed by Israeli agronomists who tap Israeli kibbutz members to run farms. Romanian authorities say there are about 3,500 companies registered in Israel that do business here. There are another 2,000 Romanian businesses owned by Israelis but registered in third countries, according to diplomats and businessmen.
These close commercial ties date back to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. Israeli contractors reconditioned Soviet-supplied MiG fighters for Romania's air force and later, with U.S. permission, sold surplus U.S. F-16s to Romania.
At the same time, many Romanians headed to Israel for jobs when their country plummeted into recession during the 1990s, and Palestinian unrest prompted Israel to rely less on Arab laborers and recruit guest workers abroad. Eventually about 200,000 Romanians joined Thais, Chinese and Filipinos working in Israel. Bucharest now bustles with Hebrew-speaking cab drivers who bought their vehicles with cash earned in Israel. Hebrew-speaking Romanians became a ready work force for returning Jews.
With Romania's economy growing at 5.6% a year over the past five years -- twice as fast as Israel's -- the country has become a magnet for ambitious young Israelis who feel stifled at home. "Our country is saturated," complains Moran Morgenshtern, a 32-year-old veterinarian who worked this summer breeding heifers in Romania. "If I ever want to run my own farm, I'll probably do it here."
Ms. Morgenshtern's employer, Tnuva Central Cooperative for the Marketing of Agricultural Produce in Israel Ltd., is Israel's largest food concern. Founded as a dairy cooperative in 1926, Tnuva today has a 70% share of the Israeli market and now looks abroad to expand. Romania has a special lure: Once it joins the EU, it will get immediate access to the huge European dairy market, which Israel has had little luck in cracking, so long as Romanian producers can meet EU sanitary and food-safety standards.
Tnuva says it can meet those standards and help Romanian farms do the same. It also cautions Romanian farmers that if they can't boost their agricultural productivity, they will be swamped with cheaper agricultural imports from more efficient farms in Western Europe. "I warn the Romanian people, 'Follow me or else you will end up slaves of the West,' " says Yoram Israeli, a 55-year-old, former kibbutz member who runs Tnuva Romania, and who is jokingly called "Moses" around his Bucharest office.
Two-Stage Strategy
Mr. Israeli has a two-stage strategy. First, Tnuva is building a yogurt-processing plant in Romania to make and sell Yoplait yogurt with milk produced locally. (Tnuva already licenses and sells Yoplait, a French brand, in Israel.) Afterward, Tnuva hopes to sell Romanian dairy products throughout Europe.
This year, Tnuva bought its first Romanian farm, a former Communist collective near the village of Adunatti Copãceni, and imported a herd of 1,200 dairy cows from Germany. A few weeks before the first cows arrived, workers, many Romanian gypsies, restored concrete barns that had been stripped of metal fixtures, including roofs, by local scavengers. Israelis cleaned the site thoroughly after inspectors discovered leucosis bacteria in pools of stagnant water. That could have infected dairy cows and disqualified their milk for sale.
The Israelis sought local dairymen who can meet EU standards. Next, Tnuva hopes to persuade co-op members to advise local farmers, invest in Romanian dairies and share technical know-how. "It's like playing matchmaker," says Rafi Shaul, the Tnuva executive in charge of hunting for local partners.
Mr. Shaul, a chain-smoker with a thinning gray ponytail, works with Costel Caras, a 48-year-old Bucharest native who began farming in 1994. Mr. Caras turns to Mr. Shaul for advice on everything from how to mix feed to how to qualify for EU farm aid.
Tramping through an overgrown pasture in July, Mr. Shaul praised Mr. Caras's placement of a concrete corral and the cleanliness of his herd's stalls. He winced at the sight of Mr. Caras's creaking water pump. "Some of these farms," Mr. Shaul muttered, "look like Israel 50 years ago."
Later, over a lunch of Romanian cheese and eggplant snacks, Mr. Caras complained that a wholesaler twice neglected to make pickups at his farm, forcing him to dump his product. If that keeps happening, he'll go broke.
Tnuva competes here from France's Groupe Danone SA and the Netherlands' Friesland Foods. Mr. Shaul said he suspects brokers may be punishing Mr. Caras for working with Tnuva. Mr. Shaul advised the farmer to be careful.
"Don't worry about me. I am a free man," the Romanian said. "We need Tnuva. We don't want just one buyer here."
Write to Joel Millman at joel.millman@wsj.com
