WorldCity Business Magazine

New talent, more depth, bigger ambitions

by Ken Roberts

Three big changes at WorldCity, the first concerning two great hires, the second expansion of our multinational directory, Who’s Here, and the third a new event series for the trade community.

As you know, America Economia and Latin Trade are two of the better known and mostrespected business magazines in Latin America.

Now, the former publisher of America Economia, Ian McCluskey, is the new publisher of World- City. And a former editor of Latin Trade, JoachimBamrud, is the new editor of WorldCity.

McCluskey, a former Time magazine correspondent covering Latin America and editor of AmericaEconomia, based in Santiago, agreed to serve as our editor temporarily, ready to move into the publisher’s seat once we found the right editor. That editor is Bamrud, who has worked as a journalist and editor in Europe, Latin America and Miami.

It’s quite the coup for WorldCity, grabbing seasoned journalists like these two, but it is also good news for you. This is the epicenter of Latin American business, with more than 1,300 multinationals based in South Florida, according to our research. Those multinationals employ more than 165,000 people and this is the truly telling number oversee about 800,000 people throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and around the world.

That is influence. That is decision-making prowess. That is the community in which you are living and working.

In an effort to continue to trumpet the significance of those 1,300 companies to the local economy, we are going to feature all of them in our next two issues, the April and May issues.

By featuring these companies in the next two issues of WorldCity, we continue to expand the reach of Who’s Here: The Guide to South Florida’s Global Companies. The first several years, it had a press run of 2,000 copies. Last year, it jumped to 10,000. Now, we are taking it to 15,000.

The final change is the addition of our third event series, adding to our successful DHL Connections, launched in 2002, and the CEO Roundtable, which was launched last year.

It seemed appropriate to announce the new event series in this issue, our biggest and most complete South Florida Annual World Trade Report since our 1998 founding.

The new quarterly event series, Miami Trade- Numbers: What’s Inside the Box, will provide acloser look at what’s inside the cargo containerscoming into our airports and seaports, where theyare coming from and going to, and how South Floridastacks up againstother Customs districts.We will provide insightsinto the economics andpolitics behind the statisticsas well as the latestregulatory legal decisionsand issues.

In case you missed the enormous numbers on the front cover, those imports and exports were worth nearly $59 billion in 2004, according to the just-released government figures. That’s a record, and that’s good news. But South Florida is not growing as fast as most other U.S. Customs districts.

Our new event series will allow the international trade community to come together to learn from each other about our common goals, problems and dreams.

It will allow us to work together to make South Florida a more dynamic, faster-growing, more efficient “world city.”

With Ian and Joachim aboard, we are excited about making WorldCity the sophisticated, interesting, engaging publication you deserve.

As always, I welcome your comments.