WorldCity Business Magazine

05 CEO Roundtable

by Rochelle Broder-Singer

Global business means global risk, as well as a hedge against the U.S. economy, according to the participants in WorldCitys most recent CEO Roundtable: the head of the Miami office for the British bank Lloyds, the founder of Miami-based communications consultancy Newlink Group and the founder of Hollywood-based technology firm TransMobile/Emission Critical.

The Price of Oil

Most businesses arent benefiting from the high price of oil. TransMobile/Emission Critical is trying to turn this into an opportunity. The firm creates software that helps clients wirelessly track the location and status of everything from trucks to oil pipelines. It can, for instance, show on one screen the location of a companys trucks, those trucks tire pressure (properly inflated tires are key to increasing fuel economy) and a variety of other information.

The price of oil affects our customers because companies are going out of business because they cant keep their fleets going, CEO Sherry Carani said. On the other hand, because we create efficiencies, its spurring business towards us.

Caranis products will also help businesses track emissions, and TransMobile/Emission Critical aims to be one of the first companies in the world certified to issue carbon credits in the transportation industry. Its actually changed our business to the point that were actually changing our name to Emission Critical, Carani said.

Newlink CEO Sergio Roitberg points out that while the price of oil doesnt directly affect his company, It affects my clients a lot, and for sure, indirectly, its going to affect me. Lloyds feels the impact in a different way. Its Latin American customers bank with the British institution in the United States to ensure the security of their money. With much of Latin America politically stable, said Carlos Estima, senior vice president, they feel the U.S. is advantageous more because of its perceived economic stability. The more stable the economy is, the better the growth prospects. Oil has not helped that lately.

His customers are diversifying into Europe and even Asia in response to slowdowns in the U.S., he said. There is a big interest both from Europeans wanting to come into Latin America and vice versa.

Global Money

Another barrier Estimas customers face are the burdens the U.S.A. Patriot Act has placed on banks, especially those dealing with funds from foreign sources. Regulation in the U.S. following Sept. 11 [2001] became very tough for banks. That regulation is driving many foreign institutions offshore; Lloyds and HSBC Bank are the only two British banks still in Miami.

One thing international banks worry about is the heavy fines which FinCEN the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has the power to levy. Those penalties, for some banks, they just dont want to take the risk at all, Estima said.

For his own bank, Estima says, another, equally important, concern is the reputational risk to which even minor violations of the complex laws can lead. What keeps me awake at night is that one day for whatever reason we are penalized or some bad reputation is spread on the bank, he said. And it just takes one of those small examples for a board in London to decide to close a business.

Carani added that these regulations have also made small business life miserable. With business from Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, a recent acquisition in Canada, and software programmers in the Ukraine, we have money bouncing around all over the world. But moving payments into TransMobiles U.S. accounts can be a major challenge.

New Media

Roitbergs biggest challenge at Newlink is the global information economy. Until the Internet age, media was in the hands of a few, and companies essentially communicated with society through mass media and advertising. Today, though, blogs, Web sites, podcasts and other new communications channels mean we have a challenge at this moment because the media does not just belong to the media conglomerate. It belongs to the people, Roitberg said.

A former television journalist, he used to never miss a nightly network newscast, but now hasnt watched one in several years, he said. Carani agreed, saying she has three computer monitors at work, one tuned into web-based news at all times.

How people get information has changed rapidly over the past five years, but Roitberg agreed its an opportunity for both savvy media providers and communications firms like his. If I have the tools, we have two possibilities to communicate with society: indirect, through the media, and direct to the people, he added.

The next frontier of corporate communications services, he predicted, will be reputation management based on Google search results. Someone could speak poorly about an individual
on a blog and, if the blog writer can figure out how to get his site to show up first on the Google search results for that person, ruin his reputation in three or four months. WC