Agora Group, Poland

newspaper/media enterprise

Founded 1989, mentored by Cox Communications who became one of its major shareholders.

http://www.answers.com/topic/agora-s-a-group “Solidarity..was legalized in April 1989 and permitted to participate in the upcoming elections. As part of the agreement, Solidarity would be permitted to publish its own newspaper…Walesa offered the editorship to Adam Michnik, a philosopher/historian/writer and longtime leading dissident who was imprisoned six of the previous 25 years for his activities. To organize and run the newspaper, Michnik turned to Helena Luczywo….Luczywo’s parents, both Jews, fled Poland to the Soviet Union during WWII…

…”In 1986 [Helena Luczywo] was able to secure an exit visa and spent several months in the United States..able to devour the wealth of newspapers and magazines at the Harvard University library…

“Even before the first issue was printed, Michnik and Luczywo knew they wanted to publish a truly independent newspaper. They formed a parent company for the paper called Agora….Walesa, on the other hand, believed that [the paper, Gazeta Wyborcza] should be owned by Solidarity. This disagreement escalated further when Gazeta backed Walesa’s opponent in the 1990 election”…

…”In 1993, Cox Enterprises Inc, the Atlanta-based media company [acquired] a 12.5 percent stake in Agora…The Cox connection also helped Agora to receive $8 million in debt financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank)…

“Agora hired Credit Suisse First Boston to help with an initial public offering (IPO) of stock….Agora set up a charitable trust..[and] looked to develop into a true media empire”…

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James M. Cox (Cox Communications, etc.)

Roosevelt (left) and Cox (right) at a campaign appearance in Washington, D.C., 1920

…he was nominated a candidate for the presidency by the Democratic party while serving as Governor. Cox supported the internationalist policies of Woodrow Wilson and favored U.S. entry into the League of Nations. However, Cox was defeated in the 1920 Presidential Election by a fellow Ohioan, U.S. Senator Warren Harding of Marion, Ohio. The public had grown weary of the turmoil of the Wilson years, and eagerly accepted Harding’s call for a “return to normalcy.” Cox’s running mate was future president Franklin D. Roosevelt, etc.

Cox had six children, one of whom, Anne Cox Chambers, is still a major shareholder in the company; she owned 98% of the company with her sister Barbara Cox Anthony until the latter’s death in 2007. The company’s headquarters is in Atlanta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Cox

James Cox Kennedy is the CEO and chairman of Cox Enterprises, the media conglomerate founded by his grandfather, James M. Cox. According to the Forbes 400 list in 2008, he is the 49th richest person in the United States, through his $6.5 billion stake in the company.

——

Christopher Cox of the SEC

“Early in his congressional career, Cox befriended two anti-Communists in Hungary and Lithuania who had been prisoners of conscience and who later became presidents of their countries after the end of Soviet domination. Cox met Árpád Göncz in 1989, and when Cox was later married, he spent part of his honeymoon in Hungary with then-President Göncz and his wife Mária. Cox met Dr. Vytautas Landsbergis, a professor at the Conservatory of Music in Vilnius, in 1989, well before the successful reestablishment of Lithuanian independence. The night Landsbergis was elected President of Lithuania, he embraced Cox on the tarmac at the airport in Vilnius after the Soviet Union had held Cox in East Berlin for a prolonged period.^[9] In May 1998, Cox was presented with the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, the highest honor the Republic of Lithuania can give to a living noncitizen.^[10]

In 1989, Polish President Lech Wałęsa joined Cox in a Washington, DC ceremony marking the enactment of Cox’s legislation establishing the Polish-American Enterprise Fund. Together with the Baltic-American Enterprise Fund, the Hungarian-American Enterprise Fund, and seven other enterprise funds in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Cox legislation, incorporated in the Support Eastern European Democracy (SEED) Act, matched U.S. foreign aid with venture capital in the newly free countries of the former Warsaw Pact.^[11]

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Cox}

^{Article: Representative Christopher Cox discloses financial records.
Byline: Dena Bunis
Jul. 13–WASHINGTON — Rep. Christopher Cox’s personnel net worth may have doubled or even tripled in just one year, based on financial disclosure forms released Tuesday by the Bush administration.
As part of his confirmation process as the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman designee, Cox was required to complete disclosure forms that were sent to the Banking Committee last Friday. The committee is expected to schedule Cox’s confirmation hearing soon.
When compared with the last congressional forms he filed — for 2003 — Cox’s net worth has ballooned from between $1 million and $3 million to between $2.7 million and …
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-133981490.html}

^—–

^{Agora Group}

Summary

Industry:	Information Collection & Delivery
Revenues:	Under $20 Million
Employees:	Under 99

Description

Agora is one of the biggest and most recognized media companies in Poland and in Central and Eastern Europe. Since 1999 its shares are listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and the GDRs are traded on the London Stock Exchange.

The flagship business, “Gazeta Wyborcza”, is the largest and most profitable Polish daily newspaper, with average daily paid circulation in excess of 412,000 copies. Since 1996 Agora has diversified its operations. Its radio group now consists of 28 local radio stations (including two associated) and one super-regional station TOK FM. In 2002 Agora entered two new media sectors, acquiring the leader of the Polish outdoor advertising market (AMS), and a portfolio of 16 color magazines. The company also publishes a free title, Metro, and operates an Internet portal, http://www.Gazeta.pl. The strategic objective of Agora is further growth, both organically and through mergers and acquisitions in the media sector.

http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/CompanyDetail.aspx?CompanyID=4985492&cs=QGTBKUIE&pc=indeed

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