Czechoslovakian Leaders Looking to U.S. Investors : Commerce: America is considered the free-market leader, with adequate resources to help forge a new economic era.

American business could gain the inside track in the race among foreign companies to invest in Czechoslovakia as it speeds toward a free-market economy.

Americans have a big advantage: Czechoslovakia’s leaders see the United States as the free-market leader with the financial resources to help usher their nation into a new economic era.

“We welcome financial proposals from Western business--especially from the United States,” said Ivan Fisera, who serves on an economic committee within the Czechoslovak Parliament. “For U.S. business, the doors in this country will be very wide open.”

However, from the perspective of many Czechoslovaks, Americans are like the eager sprinter who finds it difficult to await the starting gun.

“The American business culture is very different,” Fisera explained. “They feel transactions and deals are going very slowly in Czechoslovakia. They want to move quickly, but are frustrated because they can’t always find a government official who will make a snap decision. They have to be patient--especially this year.”

To prepare for Americans, Czechoslovakia’s government is hiring U.S. business consultants and seeking the help of Czechoslovak expatriates living in the West.

“Czechoslovaks who immigrated to the U.S. can be heroes by helping us,” Fisera said.

Among those playing a liaison role for the Czechoslovaks and potential U.S. investors is Zoltan Mihaly, a Los Angeles lawyer who fled Czechoslovakia in 1957.

Mihaly said many Czechoslovaks prefer to do business with Americans because they are less trusting of their European neighbors. Also, some Czechoslovaks believe that the U.S. government helped prompt the Soviets to relinquish control of Eastern Europe, Mihaly said.

U.S. companies, he said, could establish joint ventures and Czechoslovak subsidiaries similar to American maquiladora operations in Mexico, producing goods primarily for export.

“Companies could acquire--at little cost--good production facilities in Czechoslovakia and Hungary and then ship the products to Western Europe,” Mihaly said.

However, Mihaly said Czechoslovakia will be guarding against the kind of asset sales made by Hungary in 1990, widely viewed as deals in which Western firms paid too little. Still, many major U.S. firms are exploring possibilities in Czechoslovakia--General Electric, IBM, Price Waterhouse and Westinghouse among them.

Many large firms in the United States conduct their talks with White & Case, a New York law firm serving as a consultant to the Czech republic, one of the country’s two regional governments.

White & Case last year helped negotiate an agreement enabling Volkswagen to buy a controlling interest in Skoda, the prized Czechoslovak auto maker. The firm is now involved in a number of talks involving Western companies, including St. Louis-based Anheuser Busch.

Daniel Arbess, a White & Case representative in Prague, has heard--and rejects--arguments that U.S. firms will be reluctant to risk their investment dollars in a country in which the government and the work force have little recent market-economy experience.

“Foreign investors have no reason to be put off,” Arbess said. “The people of Czechoslovakia will learn and they will make good market decisions.”