Date: 2024-04-28 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00024963
PORTUGAL
PETER BURGESS OBSERVATIONS
Some travels into and through Portugal ... and to former Portuguese possessions Brazil, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau
PETER BURGESS OBSERVATIONS
Some travels into and through Portugal ... and to former Portuguese possessions Brazil, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau
Original article:
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I don't know a lot about Portugal ... but travelled through Lisbon several times on my world travels doing development consulting. I remember one trip where I optimized the fare by routing myself througb Brazil to Africa. I did several flights from the USA to Africa ... Mozmbique ... using TAP routing through Lisbon. This worked well except for one trip in Saptember when they had massively overbooked from Maputo to Lisbon as schools returned. The next available seat was well over three weeks out so it was suggested we rerouted through Johannesbur, but that was even worse and we got to stay in Johannesburg hotels for quite a long time. A good memory was that South African steaks are even bigger and better than they are in Texas!
When I was employed by Continental Seafoods I had to address a failing joint venture we had with a wealthy businessman in Brazil. Our company's previous management had set up a shrimp fishing joing venture in Brazil that was mearnt to be 50:50 in terms of investment and share of profit. In reality our company had put up 100% of the investment cash and our Brazilian partner was taking 100% of the operating cash flow and profit. He had Brazilian law on his side and prior to our new management had won every legal skirmish while we won nothing. My President ... Bruce Sidwell ... had a lot of useful experience in the international fishing industry and was not about to continue the failing approach previously used. Clearly the Brazilian courts were not going to support our case, so something else was needed. We made the case that more profit was possible if the trawlers were better maintained and the sailors /fishermen better trained. One of our managers ... Jeremy Raybould went to Brazil to work with men and determine how much this might actually improve our own company outcomes. Bottom line, it was not going to make much of a difference so an alternative plan was developed. After considerable planning, the eight trawlers slipped out of the harbour late at night at the start of Brazil's national holiday weekend and set off for West Africa. The alarm did not go off until the end of the holiday weekend, by which time the vessels were in international waters not far from Africa. We had successfully 'repossessed' the trawlers and now it was up to the Brazilan company owner to start suing us either in the United States or in some other international jurisdiction. The Brizilian joint venture partner immediately flww to CSF in the United States to 'raise hell' but it was not easy. As a practical matter, the Brazilian had broken all sorts of Brazilian law related to Brazilian exchange control in order to set up his end of the joint venture ... and while CSF had facilitated this no US or international laws had been broken on our side. I still recall being asked by my President to get our Brazilian visitor a cup of coffee from our coffee machine and delivering an awful cup of American machine coffee in a polystyrene cup to him ... it seemed to sum up this whole saga. It also reminds me of the power and value of teamwork and being able to think, plan and execute 'outside the box'.
Later on in my career I did some consulting assignments in Mozambique.
At another point in my career I did some work in Guinea Bissau in West Africa ... another country with a Portuguese history.
Peter Burgess