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UP&DOWN
Written by: Monika Mudranincová

PEOPLE UP

foto archiv		Jean-Francois Ott The head of Orco Property Group announced the listing of Orco's shares on the PSE. The real estate developer has been traded on the Euronext Paris stock exchange since December 2000.
Photo: archiv		Petr Sýkora The founder and co-owner of Papirius announced the aquisition of Lithuanian company Mabivil. With the Baltic region added to branches in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, S_kora now owns the number one distributor of office equipment in central and eastern Europe.
Photo: Jan Vágner		Petr Chmela The general director of the Zlín-based company Tescoma announced that revenues for 2004 reached CZK 1.1 billion (without VAT), which represents a 10% year-on-year increase. The company has been doing extremely well on the Russian, Ukrainian, and Italian markets.

PEOPLE DOWN

Photo: ČTK		Marie Součková The former minister of health is being prosecuted for the CZK 10 million contract with the lawyer Zdeněk Nováček, who represented the Czech Republic in the Diag Human case without any public tender.
Photo: ČTK		František Chvalovský The entrepreneur and former boss of the Czech Football Association lost his arbitration in Switzerland in which he sued ČSOB and Plzeňský Prazdroj for CZK 1 billion. He personally faces charges for unpaid debts of CZK 1.5 billion to Komerční banka.
Photo: ČTK		Pavel Němec The Freedom Union chairman, vice-premier of the government, and member of parliament has a record number of absences in office. Since elections began in 2002, he has missed 56% of all voting, while he excused himself in only half of the cases. Despite this, he does not want to resign his mandate.

Photo: Martin Šára

Michal Heřman: Stepping in the same river twice
AT THE END OF last year, Michal Heřman (41) was named general director (CEO) of Eurotel Praha, replacing Terrence Valeski, thus becoming the first Czech ever to head the number-one Czech mobile operator. His task is to bring Eurotel through a successful privatization, to maintain high profitability, and heighten internal efficiency. "I have to roll up my sleeves and work hard," he says resolutely, adding that many challenges lie ahead. "For example, I want to focus more on employee motivation." He relies on teamwork and doesn't like the glorification of individuals. "I'm not afraid of having people around me who are better in this field than I am. Success requires teamwork," he explains. Heřman is no newcomer to Eurotel. He was there for the company's birth, and he rose through several positions to become senior financial director in 1996. After ten years of telecommunications work he switched fields: from 2000 to 2002 he was vice president for finance at Komerční banka. He then worked briefly for Alfa Bank in Russia, and in September 2003 he came home in response to an offer by Český Telecom CEO Gabriel Berdár to take part in the synergy of Český Telecom and Eurotel.
His current work load is daunting. "I often work 14 to 16 hours a day, but I try to relax with golf in the summer and skiing in the winter, or at least walking my retriever," confides this father of a ten-year-old daughter, who thinks spending a month on the other side of the world is the best relaxation. "I'd leave Prague with my mobile phone turned off," he says. "I did it four years ago in New Zealand, and it was great!"

	Photo: Martin Šára

Jaroslav Lhota: A contented entrepreneur
CO-OWNER and chairman of the board of the Adventura travel agency, Jaroslav Lhota (47) is an example of a man who was able to brilliantly merge business with his passion - traveling. Fourteen years ago he founded Adventura, which soon shot up among renowned travel agencies for clients seeking adventure. "I was a complete greenhorn in business. I knew nothing about the travel industry, but we dived into it at full speed, and the free market of the '90s was good to us," he recalls. In its first season the agency's sales reached CZK one million, and last year CZK it brought in 100 million.
A pretty good performance for a man who had no business training. Lhota was originally a scientist. "When I was ten I assembled various electrical appliances - a radio, lamps." But this graduate of the department of mathematics, physics, and electrical technology didn't earn a decent living as a scientist at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, so he had to earn extra money by painting gutters and repairing roofs. Today he has no such problems. As an Africa expert he's busiest determining where to take his clients and what to offer them. Additionally, he's working on merging the headquarters of seven affiliates and creating a unified holding company.
This businessman who wears bracelets from Niger, Pakistan, Morocco, Tanzania, and Tibet radiates cheerfulness. "What I do isn't just a business, it's my philosophy of life," he says, adding that Adventura's clients are like its employees - they're all people who seek out exciting experiences. The agency currently has 30 full-time employees and 200 part-timers, and the team could eventually be reinforced with another family member. Lhota's thirteen-year-old son likes traveling with his dad (they toured Iceland in an ATV) and his eighteen-year-old daughter is studying the travel industry.