Word: elektrim
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...plus the world's largest music company, Universal Music Group, and the French subscription TV station Canal Plus, neither of which is doing well. Then there are the "noncore" assets: a remaining 20% stake in the water utility it spun off last year, Veolia Environnement, and a shareholding in Elektrim, a Polish telecommunications company. For a while Fourtou seemed to be betting on telecom: last year, even with his mandate to divest, he acquired BT Group's 26% stake in Cegetel, thwarting an attempt by Britain's Vodafone to take control. And last week, Vivendi's board signed...
Lundberg was brought in as Elektrim CEO in February 1999 by institutional investors who had grown impatient with the previous management. The company had grown too quickly in the 1990s, says Lundberg, with interests in everything from chicken farms to electronic-cable manufacturing. Then reports leaked that the management had granted an option to an outside company for a 5% stake in Elektrim's most valuable asset, the wireless firm Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, or PTC. Major Western shareholders swooped in. Lundberg sold off interests in nearly 80 companies, slashing staff levels from 30,000 to 15,000 by last December...
...former venture capitalist then refocused the company on telecommunications with acquisitions worth more than $1 billion. Today Elektrim boasts more than 2.5 million subscribers through its voice, video, mobile and fixed-line telephone networks. Early last year Elektrim clashed with the German giant Deutsche Telekom over a controlling interest in wireless company PTC. Lundberg has apparently prevailed, but a lawsuit launched by Deutsche Telekom in Polish courts blocked further investments and forced her to take out a loan that increased PTC's debt load 55%. It took a last-minute $1.2 billion sale to Vivendi of a 49% share...
...Kidder Peabody in New York City introduced a level of managerial and financial expertise that did not exist in Poland 10 years ago. "She brought a completely new quality to our business," says Bochniarz. Her non-Polish background also helped when it came to making tough decisions at Elektrim...
...that she has lost her ability to surprise. Lundberg recently presided at a ceremony at one of Elektrim's power plants where, according to Polish tradition, she smashed a bottle of champagne on a new boiler and became its official guardian. "I am the first godmother of a boiler in Poland!" she says with a grin. For most Poles, Lundberg continues to shatter all molds...