Word: polished
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...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 in a subsidiary that controls PTC to stave off disaster. "It wasn't an experience that...
Lundberg is a rarity: an American in Poland with no Polish roots. A graduate of Wharton and a native of Lexington, Mass., she moved to the country in 1991, not for any sentimental reasons but to become the local head of the Polish-American Enterprise Fund, a U.S. government-backed effort to spawn new businesses in the post-communist nation. "I didn't necessarily make a decision to leave the U.S.," she says, but "I felt that the potential was here [in Poland]." "She's very post-1989," says Ambassador Fried. "There's no sentiment or ethnic ties...
...Bochniarz says Lundberg's prior experience as vice president of corporate finance at 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...
Lundberg is thought to be the highest paid executive in Warsaw, though all she will say is that she's earned less than she would have made in the U.S. over the same period. If she didn't have Polish roots to start with, she's tried to grow them on the job. In 1994 Lundberg bought a home on the outskirts of Warsaw (relocating six families in the process) and characteristically took it down to bare bricks before renovating from scratch with the help of renowned local artisans. She can follow a conversation in Polish, and her two children...
...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...