‘Don’t Let Anybody Notice You’re There’ : Industrialist Advises Low Profile South of Border

If you ask John Wright, chairman of Fluor Corp.’s St. Joe Minerals Corp. unit, the secret to doing business south of the border is simple: Don’t let anybody notice that you’re there.

“Never (go) in there as a big multinational,” Wright told Orange County business people at a Newport Beach luncheon on Monday.

Adopting a Spanish name for the business and keeping the “expatriates” to a minimum, he advised, are two good ways to avoid alienating the locals. St. Joe’s Chilean gold mine, for instance, is called El Indio mine.

St. Joe Minerals has operated mines in Argentina since the company’s founding in 1931 and also has holdings in Peru and the United States. Wright, already a seasoned veteran of Latin America when he joined the firm 1971 after a stint with International Paper Corp., was named president and chairman of St. Joe in 1982, a year after it was purchased by Irvine-based Fluor for $2.2 billion.

While the purchase seemed like a good idea to Fluor at the time, the subsidiary has since fallen on hard times, losing $3.9 million in 1984. And in its struggle to regain its own lost profits, Fluor is eager to sell off minority interests in almost all of St. Joe’s operations, Wright said.

For the three-dozen or so people in the audience at the luncheon of the World Trade Assn. of Orange County, many of whom said they are considering investing in South America, Wright’s advice could mean the difference between a successful overseas venture or winding up on the wrong side of a military junta.

In addition to learning the local version of Spanish, he advised, hire a good law firm to smooth out the bumps when dealing with Latin American governments.

“The law as we know it is very different,” Wright said. Companies that fail to master local laws often find themselves prevented from sending their earnings back to the United States. “If you don’t get your money out, you’ve wasted your efforts,” he warned.

Still, some governments can be easier to deal with than others. While Wright said he doesn’t go to Nicaragua anymore, Chile is again becoming a good place to do business after years of “tremendous upheaval.”

“We Americans don’t like military governments, but (Gen. Augusto) Pinochet has done a remarkable job of bringing order,” Wright said. “He’s eliminated the Communist problem and brought stability.”

Pinochet, long criticized for human rights abuses by such groups as Amnesty International, seized power in 1973 during a bloody coup, which resulted in the murder of leftist President Salvador Allende.

Following the brief speech, Wright answered questions, including those from a local businessman hoping to do business in Chile. With insurrections quelled and free elections off in the distant future, the business climate there should be good, Wright said.

“Today is a good time to invest in Chile,” he said. “There will be five or six years of relative peace there.”