Fri, 01/12/2006 - 01:00 | by admin
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It was in 1999 that the U.S. Department of State launched its Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) to honor U.S. companies whose overseas operations stand as an example of good corporate citizenship. Each year, numerous projects from around the world are put forward for the award and this year, for the first time, a project in Chile - the Karukinka reserve on Tierra del Fuego - was one of the three winners.
The property, donated by Goldman Sachs to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of New York, comprises some 275,000 hectares of woodland, peat bogs and steppes on the Chilean side of the main Tierra del Fuego island. It is - as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted during the award ceremony in Washington on November 6 - an area “the size of Rhode Island and…contains rare and fragile ecosystems unique to South America.”
Receiving the award, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, recalled that the donation arose from a routine purchase of the distressed debt of a failed logging project. The investment bank then “identified a rare opportunity to create value though not in the same sense commonly thought of in the world of finance,” said Blankfein.
As well as conserving a unique landscape, the project, which will receive ongoing support from Goldman Sachs, will also provide new facilities for scientific research and, through the development of sustainable ecotourism, promises to create jobs for the people of Tierra del Fuego. “This undertaking…illustrates in a compelling way that the private sector can play an important role in helping to protect the environment,” pointed out Blankfein.
Blankfein paid tribute to Kathleen Barclay, a director of AmCham Chile, and, in a particularly moving moment, to John O’Leary, a former U.S. ambassador to Chile, who passed away last year. Barclay and O’Leary “did a brilliant job in guiding Goldman Sachs through this donation,” recalled Blankfein.
Through a satellite link with the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Ambassador Craig A. Kelly and Eduardo Aninat, Goldman Sachs representative in Chile, also spoke during the ceremony. Ambassador Kelly commended Goldman Sachs for the “enormous heritage it is offering to Chile and the world” while Aninat, a former Chilean finance minister, highlighted the donation as a sign of the value that Goldman Sachs attaches to Chile.
The other two awards went to Sambazon, a small U.S. business, for its contribution to the sustainable development of the Amazon rainforest and the living conditions of indigenous people through its marketing of the acai berry, and to General Motors for its efforts to reintegrate demobilized members of Colombia’s paramilitary forces by providing them with job opportunities.
It was significant, said Secretary Rice, that all three winners of this year’s Award for Corporate Excellence - and, in fact, almost half the finalists - were companies working in Latin America. “Today we honor not only three American companies that are doing extraordinary work in Latin America, we are also honoring the partnership in our entire hemisphere,” she said.
U.S. State Department Award for Chile Project
By By Ruth BradleyPrintSend to friend
It was in 1999 that the U.S. Department of State launched its Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) to honor U.S. companies whose overseas operations stand as an example of good corporate citizenship. Each year, numerous projects from around the world are put forward for the award and this year, for the first time, a project in Chile - the Karukinka reserve on Tierra del Fuego - was one of the three winners.
The property, donated by Goldman Sachs to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of New York, comprises some 275,000 hectares of woodland, peat bogs and steppes on the Chilean side of the main Tierra del Fuego island. It is - as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted during the award ceremony in Washington on November 6 - an area “the size of Rhode Island and…contains rare and fragile ecosystems unique to South America.”
Receiving the award, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, recalled that the donation arose from a routine purchase of the distressed debt of a failed logging project. The investment bank then “identified a rare opportunity to create value though not in the same sense commonly thought of in the world of finance,” said Blankfein.
As well as conserving a unique landscape, the project, which will receive ongoing support from Goldman Sachs, will also provide new facilities for scientific research and, through the development of sustainable ecotourism, promises to create jobs for the people of Tierra del Fuego. “This undertaking…illustrates in a compelling way that the private sector can play an important role in helping to protect the environment,” pointed out Blankfein.
Blankfein paid tribute to Kathleen Barclay, a director of AmCham Chile, and, in a particularly moving moment, to John O’Leary, a former U.S. ambassador to Chile, who passed away last year. Barclay and O’Leary “did a brilliant job in guiding Goldman Sachs through this donation,” recalled Blankfein.
Through a satellite link with the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Ambassador Craig A. Kelly and Eduardo Aninat, Goldman Sachs representative in Chile, also spoke during the ceremony. Ambassador Kelly commended Goldman Sachs for the “enormous heritage it is offering to Chile and the world” while Aninat, a former Chilean finance minister, highlighted the donation as a sign of the value that Goldman Sachs attaches to Chile.
The other two awards went to Sambazon, a small U.S. business, for its contribution to the sustainable development of the Amazon rainforest and the living conditions of indigenous people through its marketing of the acai berry, and to General Motors for its efforts to reintegrate demobilized members of Colombia’s paramilitary forces by providing them with job opportunities.
It was significant, said Secretary Rice, that all three winners of this year’s Award for Corporate Excellence - and, in fact, almost half the finalists - were companies working in Latin America. “Today we honor not only three American companies that are doing extraordinary work in Latin America, we are also honoring the partnership in our entire hemisphere,” she said. 
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