Word: opic
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...green-carpeted Caribbean island of St. Lucia. But the advertiser is not an airline seeking to entice vacation travelers. It is an obscure federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corp., drumming up business for the political-risk insurance it sells to U.S. firms that operate in the Third World. OPIC is a bright star in Washington at a time when many departments are in eclipse. Says OPIC President Craig Nalen: "We are a real Administration success story...
Nalen, 52, had never heard of the eleven-year-old agency before being asked to head it in 1981. A former president of STP Corp., which makes automotive products, Nalen launched a study to see what people thought of OPIC and found that it was largely unknown. Nalen launched a feverish promotion campaign to tell audiences that OPIC encourages American companies to make investments in developing countries by offering insurance against war, revolution, expropriation and the inability to convert local currencies back into dollars. OPIC made a record $76.2 million profit in 1981, while issuing $1.5 billion of insurance...
...While OPIC has never lost money, it has paid off some hefty insurance claims. OPIC paid $316 million to ITT, Anaconda and 13 other U.S. firms whose property was expropriated in 1971 by Chile's Salvador Allende, but expects to recover the bulk of that from the present Chilean government. Firms driven out of Iran in 1979 have received an additional $14.5 million from OPIC, whose total liability to them could reach $40 million...
...help companies set up shop in the Third World, OPIC shares the costs of feasibility studies, makes and guarantees loans and sponsors foreign tours. Barco International Inc., an Ohio-based agribusiness firm, discovered the largest pig herds in Southeast Asia on a trip to Thailand in July and plans to build a slaughterhouse there. After the same trip, Hawaiian Holiday Macadamia Nut Co. decided to invest $9 million there to grow cashews and macadamia nuts and to produce chocolate candy...
...foreign policy. In Chile, most of the U.S. corporations-except ITT-have followed that standard, even at a loss. Ford, for instance, simply pulled out of Chile, wrote off a $16 million loss and settled for a $900,000 payment from the federally financed Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), which insures multinational corporations against expropriation. ITT now stands to lose whatever compensation Allende had promised to pay; and unless the company can disprove the mounting evidence that its loss resulted from its attempt to interfere in Chilean politics, it may also lose its $92.5 million claim with the OPIC...