Word: hashemi
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...working for Hamid Hashemi, CEO of Muvico. The Iranian immigrant began accumulating Florida cinemas in the 1980s. "I thought, What an easy business," he says. "The movies are made by someone else. You sell popcorn. Easy!" But when a major chain opened a rival screen down the street and put his first theater out of business, Hashemi realized he had to offer what the big guys didn't. "At the end of the day, you all get the same 35-mm tape," he says. "What sets you apart is how you package...
...Hashemi says that privately held Muvico posted revenues of $130 million last year. And with plans to add three or four theaters a year, he predicts revenue growth of 30% to 40% annually. Concessions, which typically make up 25% of exhibitors' sales, add up to 33% of sales at Muvico; the Palace restaurant alone grosses $4 million a year. Of course, costs are higher too for the exhibitor and moviegoers, who are charged up to double the average ticket price for the experience...
...unassuming Ahmadinejad, 48, defeated the wily political veteran Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70, who ran on a pragmatic platform that promised accommodation with the West. But Rafsanjani could not consolidate support from the country's liberal and progressive voters who were wary of his family's largely unexplained wealth and unhappy about the corruption that grew under his watch as President from 1989 to 1997. So while Iran's economically disadvantaged classes, Islamic militias and web of religious social-action groups provided Ahmadinejad with 62% of the votes, Rafsanjani could muster only 36% in a country almost evenly split...
...field of seven candidates, Ahmadinejad won about 19% of the popular vote, nowhere near the more than 50% needed to become President outright. But the favorite, the pragmatic Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 70, won only 21%, hence this Friday's runoff vote between the two. The reformers on last week's ballot, supporters of the policies of outgoing President Mohammed Khatami, were badly trounced and now see in Ahmadinejad's smiling face a stealth campaign by Iran's conservative ruling ayatullahs to take the presidency, denying it even to Rafsanjani, who has his fair share of hard-line credentials...
...belief does not bode well for a democracy that depends on the informed intelligence of the citizenry for sound government and an efficient economy. Lawrence Cranberg Austin, Texas, U.S. Eyes on Iran Joe Klein's column " Iran's Pragmatic Face" [May 30] referred to former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as "a dealmaking pragmatist [who] may push to repair ties with the U.S. " Viewing Rafsanjani as pragmatic is dangerous, since that is an example of seeing the political landscape of totalitarian countries through the U.S.'s democratic eyes. Rafsanjani is pragmatic in comparison with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah...