Why I came, why I stay. 15 years and counting...

It is a question that many of my friends have asked and over these past 15 years, I have put the question to myself, why on earth did I return to Romania? In 1989, I was working in a relatively comfortable job in New York, recently married, no kids and spending my day speculating on the price of commodities for E F Hutton prior to the take-over by Merrill Lynch.

By Radu Florescu

My first real steps back to Romania began in May 1990 five months after Eastern Europe’s only bloody uprising that removed the Ceausescus and climaxed with Elena and Nicolae’s hasty military trial and summary execution on Christmas Day 1989. That May, I arrived at what was a totally dilapidated Otopeni Airport after a 14-hour packed Tarom flight from New York with my favorite Brooks Brother shirt stained by the leaking water from the overhead compartment in the badly aging Boeing 727. It was, at the time, one of the few direct flights to Bucharest and certainly the cheapest. Spring was generous that year with abundant sunshine and crowds of people wandering about in the streets – there was barely any traffic (or cars) to speak of those days. There was hope in the air and a glow of optimism on most people’s faces at a chance to turn back the clocks and make up for lost time – 30 years to be more precise. The only two decent hotels, (decent would be generous), the Bucharest Hotel and Intercontinental, were already booked and I was checked into the Hanul lui Manuc, a small historic landmark which had maintained its charm despite years of neglect and lack of clean sheets! It was really bedbugs galore! I never believed that doing business in Romania would be easy, but my early days in Romania were much more difficult than one could imagine. Work days seemed to be long and unproductive especially after taking into account my training and experience in Wall Street firms where the corporate rules could not be applied. In those days, telecommunications were abysmal in Romania and getting a fixed line installed was expensive and painful, not to mention the “tip” demanded by the telephone workers from Romtelecom who always seemed to show up at your door at the most inconvenient time of the day. Getting a fax through to the US would take anything from two-three hours (for one page) and the basic Minolta fax model cost over USD 1,600 – the same model in Western Europe was only USD 180. A simple apartment in the so called “office park” behind the Bucharest Hotel offered a semblance of a professional working environment. The office was actually a sublet from an Austrian Count who had been doing import/export deals for years in Romania and run by the most austere Transylvanian woman a la “Young Frankenstein” I had ever met. She would insist that I leave any valuables in her safe at the office which seemed the smart thing to do at the time. Getting started was made far easier by the fact my father still had many contacts. Hiring was my first challenge and I took one easy route. Making appointments with my father’s academic friends/associates from the University, I asked them to recommend their former best or best students. From there, with a group of four people, including myself, our company began operations.

Television, while arguably limited in Romania at that time, still presented itself as the most promising commercial medium for the future. My brother John, after a stint as communications director at the Democratic National Party, recently moved to LA as the CEO of David Frost’s US operations. Thus Paradine Televsion with a library of television properties promised to boost Romanian TV’s unbelievably boring daily programming. After weeks of letters and phone calls, I finally received a “we are intrigued” response from British American Tobacco.

At the time, tobacco advertising still had no restrictions in Eastern Europe (black markets were unknown in Romania) and with some reluctance and much opposition from my father, we signed an agreement with Romanian Television for the first sponsored programming deal in the history of Romanian TV. The impact was felt immediately. The first series “The Guinness Book of World Records” captured top ratings after the first night of airing. This was only just the beginning. After a few other television series and thankfully, a few other sponsors, I signed our first major deal to purchase the entire collection (14 seasons) of the “Dallas” series for Romania. During the Ceausescu years, a limited number of “Dallas” episodes had been broadcast with considerable success. However, this re-launch of “Dallas” would set another records of sorts. The series began with a 95 percent rating – the highest rating in the history of European TV – which still stands today. So successful that while traveling through Otopeni Airport one late evening during the broadcast of the show, no one at customs was even available to stamp my passport. It was only when I identified myself as the “man who brought Dallas to the screen” that I was ushered through the VIP line reserved for heads of state. Otherwise, no one would have even noticed or cared and I would have stood there for the duration of the one-hour episode.

Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly in Romania as my first real business crisis was soon to follow. After the passing of a law banning cigarette advertising on television, I received a telephone call from the director general of Romanian Television informing me that one sponsor (not naming Kent cigarettes) would have to go for a variety of reasons. My immediate response was that I understood his position, but it would mean stopping the broadcast of the series. A dead silence was the only response at the end of the other line (actually it was more of a gasp than anything else). As expected the tabloid press caught wind of the story and front pages of all major national publications ran stories the next day featuring titles “The End of Dallas” or “Will we ever know who shot JR?”. Faced with an angry mob of 300 who had camped outside the gates of Romanian Television, the management relented and allowed the series to continue uninterrupted.

This was my first taste of the electronic media world and the best trial by fire training for a more sophisticated challenge on the horizon. In 1993, after several long meetings and an exchange of letters, I signed a joint venture agreement with Saatchi & Saatchi and “re-launched” our small company into the world of advertising. It was only in 1995 that the advertising world took root and it wasn’t long until all major ad firms opened up shop in Romania. These were the golden years.

Despite the new elections and improved growth, Romania’s economic and social ills still persist and are far from any remedy. As Bucharest (much less the rest of the country) forged ahead with a building boom – and looks good at night – many of Romania’s forgotten generation and middle class were being left behind. Doing business in Romania is fine, but in my view, building and investing in corporate social responsibility is simply good business.

Life in Romania has its ups and downs. The Bucharest night life still rages until 8 am on weekends. There are some clubbing events that I hear about that make some of the Resevoir dorm parties look like a Mr. Rogers tea get together. Gone, or almost gone, are the wild dogs that once roamed through Bucharest unhindered, deterring many would-be joggers from venturing out in the early hours. A city of 4,000 homes has now sprung up in what seemed to be a few weeks (the poor quality certainly shows) in a wooded area just north of the capital. New shopping malls are constructed and car sales boomed as Romanians’ love affairs with automobiles lured all every major dealer to open up shop. Congestion, pollution and rising costs now seem to make Bucharest less the Paris of the East, but rather, the Newark of the Carpathians. As the perceived hardships have eased and Romania can now boast of being a member of both NATO and the European Union, the more civilized city has lessened the spirit of adventure and the “unknown” factor that I enjoyed when I first arrived back in 1990.

My interest in and love for Romania still remains strong. My work still keeps me at the office for more than 14 hours a day.

When asked repeatedly why I went back to Romania in the first place, well perhaps it is because my ancestors kept calling me back.

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