Assistance for foreign investors

The Nation (29 October 2007)

The Washington-based head of a business-diplomacy consulting firm talks to KI Woo about the company's new operations in Thailand and existing activities throughout Asia.

Foreign companies investing abroad face a multitude of challenges. Even if they are major players in their home countries, they often need local experts who know the lay of the land to guide them through many intricate, and often unseen, hurdles.

Margery Krauss, the CEO and founder of Apco Worldwide, a Washington-based global communications consulting company with offices in 28 countries, recently told The Nation her company specialises in helping multinational companies from the US and Europe compete successfully in foreign markets.

"I would like to characterise what we do as business diplomacy," she said.
Krauss, who attended her company's mid-October grand opening in Bangkok, said Apco helped companies strategically position themselves in new markets.

"We help them build, defend and consolidate their reputations through communications and other related shareholder activities," she said.

Krauss said that when companies entered new markets, Apco first helped them determine what type of face would optimise their presence.

"Our experienced people on the ground can assist with government relations, business relationships and help articulate how companies will be viewed by potential employees," she said.
Apco, which was started by Krauss in 1984 as an offshoot of top-tier legal firm Arnold and Porter, continues providing litigation-communications support to clients in the US and Europe. In addition, the company helps clients traverse the new challenges often posed by regulatory authorities in different parts of the world. "That is the 'defend' part of our business."

Krauss said Apco's seasoned experts, who come with a wide variety of experience in each market, help clients deepen relationships through communications and external relations. The company's local people are experienced in many business areas and have a clear understanding of the city, country and the people in each market.

"They help clients build and profit from their presence."

Apco works with many Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft and UPS, and has expanded with them as they open new markets globally.

"We have an eclectic mix of services all geared to the corporate suite," she said.
Krauss said the company had expanded because in each market it offered an integrated set of skills that circled around an understanding of the local market.

"Our people know what it takes for a business to be successful in a particular market, and we want to be our clients' partner of choice when they enter new markets," she said.
In Thailand, Apco has asked retired senior banker James Stent to drive the company's formation.

"Jim has had more than three decades of financial-institution and business experience throughout Asia, and we believe that he and the team he has assembled will provide great services to our clients," she said.

Krauss said the company had expanded to different countries by finding experienced and well-respected people like Stent who really understood a market.

"We then build the kind and range of skills around that person or group of people."
The company has gone through several transitions under Krauss' tutelage.

"I started out as a one-person firm that handled a client's non-legal needs that were necessary for successful operations," she said.

Krauss gradually built the firm's operations in the US and did not expand abroad until 1991, when Arnold and Porter was asked by the Russian government to draw up its new joint-venture laws.

"Apco was in a prime position to help its clients expand into Russia by helping with many non-legal requirements that needed on-the-ground responses," she said.

Arnold and Porter sold its Apco stake in 1991 to Grey Advertising, a global company with operations in more than 200 cities worldwide. With Grey as a shareholder, Apco expanded into many European and Asian cities during the next decade, including Asian offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, New Delhi, Singapore and Bangkok.

"We followed our clients as they expanded," she said.

In 2004, Krauss brought in a private-equity firm that bought out Grey. "We are now an employee-owned company with 600 staff worldwide," she said.