OVERSEAS INVESTMENT

The Warsaw Marriott Hotel, which opened in Oct. 1989, was a center of business activity as foreign investors sought opportunities in Poland's transforming economy.  The blueprint for economic reform was set by the Balcerowicz plan, introduced in Sept. 1989, which called for "shock therapy." The first few years of the transition were indeed difficult; a working paper of the International Monetary Fund notes that the economy underwent a contraction that "was deeper than any earlier post-World War II recession in Poland" but that "it was shallower and shorter than in most other transition countries."
Businessmen at the Warsaw Marriott.
It would be interesting to see a list of the companies that held meetings at the Warsaw Marriott in the first year or two after its opening.  Meetings included on Aug. 17, 1990 Sumitomo Corporation and Westinghouse Electric and on Aug. 21 Cabanco Group and RJ Reynolds Tobacco.


The Warsaw Marriott was the chain's 500th hotel.  The hotel occupies floors 20 and above of the 43-story building, which is technically known as the LIM Center after the three partners in the consortium that built it: LOT (Polish Airlines), ILBAU GmbH (Austrian construction firm), and Marriott International.  Marriott's website notes that the hotel was "the first western-managed hotel in Eastern Europe and the tallest hotel in Warsaw."  See: Stuart Auerbach.  "Marriott's Polish Pursuit."  The Washington Post, Jan. 7, 1990.
 
The office of the Illinois World Trade Center on the 16th Floor of the Palace of Culture and Science opened on July 26.
 
Agency for Foreign Investment.
 
(Above) A Gerber sign near the 10th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw.  Commercial advertising like this was relatively rare.  [Also in the background of this photo is Adam Roman's statue Sztafeta (Relay) and the stadium, which has an interesting history.  See: Helena Patzer, Magdalena Góralska, Małgorzata Winkowska.  "The Stadium as a Witness. A Story of a Changing Monument."  View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, No. 9, 2015].

(left) A Gerber sign at Warsaw airport says, "The best nutrients and accessories for your child."
(above)  In Warsaw, signs for several trading companies.  (below) Austrian and German are "in Poland's neighborhood," and their companies were quite active.

In 1990 HOCHTIEF, the large German construction company, started work on construction of a passenger terminal, parking structure, and road system at Warsaw airport.

In Gdansk...
A notice posted for P.H.Z. Universal S.A. public share subscription declares, "Universal Shares!  The more you invest the more you earn." 

According to Wikipedia, during communist times, Universal, based in Warsaw, was "a monopolist in foreign trade in household appliances, although it also acted as an intermediary in trade in a number of other types of goods."  Universal was an early example of privatization.  Authors Gomułka and Jasiński note that Universal "had most of its shares in private hands already under the Rakowski government." (Rakowski was the second to last prime minister in the communist era, serving from Sept. 1988-Aug. 1989). 



Additional Resources:
Reuters.  "Gerber Move Into Poland."  New York Times, Oct. 4, 1991.

Debora L. Spar.  "Gerber Products Company: Investing in the New Poland."  Harvard Business School Case 793-069, March 1993. (Revised July 1994.)

Jane Perlez.  "In Poland, Gerber Learns Lessons of Tradition."  New York Times, Nov. 8, 1993.

Elizabeth C. Dunn.  PRIVATIZING POLAND: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

David Lipton and Jeffrey Sachs.  "Privatization in Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland."  Brookings Institution, June 1, 1990.

David Gordon.  "The Polish Foreign Investment Law of 1990."  The International Lawyer Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer 1990).

—.  "Privatization in Poland."  Law Library of Congress. File No. 1992-0467, March 1992.
 
Stanisław Gomułka and Piotr Jasiński.  "Privatization in Poland 1989-1993: Policies, Methods, and Results." in Privatization in Central and Eastern Europe, Longman, 1994, pp. 997-1031.  ...via ResearchGate

Jerzy Rajski.  "Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises in Poland."  Hastings International and Comparative Law Review Vol. 17, No. 4 (Summer 1994).

Ben Slay.  THE POLISH ECONOMY: Crisis, Reform, and Transformation.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Dennis A. Rondinelli and Jay Yurkiewicz.  "Privatization And Economic Restructuring in Poland: An Assessment of Transition Policies."  The American Journal of Economics and Sociology Vol. 55, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 145-160.

Mark De Broeck and Vincent Koen.  "The 'Soaring Eagle': Anatomy of the Polish Take-Off in the 1990s."  International Monetary Fund Working Paper, Jan. 2000.
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