User:Tarasthebulbulemir/Alberto Llaryora

Alberto Llaryora is an Argentinian businessman, resident in Spain for nearly three decades. He is the owner of a series of companies registered under the name of a parent company, AFA, which is also known as NOA and currently operating in Spain as Grupo 33. The company's main offices are in Madrid, and it is also registered in London as AFAPress UK or Willwell (AFA PRESS UK LTD, Pellipar House, 1st Floor, 9 Cloak Lane United Kingdom. Tel ... It's current Madrid offices are Paseo Recoletos ... Madrid... Tel ... Laryora is generally credited with having invented, or at least developed on an unprecedented scale, what is known in the print media as the special advertising section. Over the years, Llaryora's many companies have placed supplements in some of the leading print publications in the English and French speaking world, among them, in France Paris Match, in the United States USA Today, The New York Times, The Miami Herald, and in the United Kingdom The Times, The Independent, The Observer, and The Daily Telegraph.

The special advertising sections produced by Llaryora's group of companies are typically made to appear as though they are investment reports on emerging economies (see link to AFApress website below). They consist of lead articles about key sectors of the economy, usually based on interviews. Advertising typically makes up around 60 percent of a special report.

How the business works Reports are produced according to the following steps: The embassy of a country is usually approached with a proposal to prepare a report on the country. This proposal will refer to the key sectors of the economy to be featured in the report. AFA will ask the embassy for letters of recommendation to ministers, as well as large state companies, and sometimes important private companies.

A team is then sent to the country. The team is typically made up of an attractive young woman who sells the advertising, and a male, who takes on the role of a journalist. There will usually be a trainee as well. The team will then set up interviews with ministers and leading companies, ostensibly interviewing them for their views on their sector of the economy, or the activities of their company. At the end of the interview, the saleswoman will "invite" the company to "participate" further in the report by taking out an advertisement in the special section.

Depending on the response of advertisers, and from which sectors they come, a report will later be written up that will only include those companies that have bought space in the report.

Typically, a full page may sell for as much as $150,000 in a prestigious publication like the New York Times. This rate will be well above what it would cost the advertiser to place an advertisement themselves in said publication. As AFA will often send more than one team to a country, it makes sure that potential advertisers do not know

AFA's business model is based on buying an agreed amount of advertising space from a newspaper over a year at discount rates. Its myriad companies, each one set up to work with a particular publication, then cover the costs of publishing their reports by selling advertising

However, on many occasions this has seriously compromised the editorial direction of the publication in question. Examples of this include The Observer, which during the mid 1990s had investigated the British government's sale of fighter planes to the military dictatorship of General Suharto, which were likely to be used in Indonesia's war of occupation in East Timor. The island had been occupied by Indonesia following the withdrawal of the former colonial power Portugal in 1975, which was never recognized internationally. Jakarta had been criticized by the United Nations and other organizations for its brutal campaign there. The Observer, through former editor Donald Trelford and an intermediary with connections to the paper called Reg Bloom, had agreed to print AFA supplements. This was before The Guardian bought the paper. The Guardian discovered that The Observer was to include a series of supplements on Indonesia, while exposing the country's war against Timor, and had to negotiate its way out of the deal, causing much embarrassment. British fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye launched an investigation into the affair. At that time, AFA had set up a company called Images, Words Ltd that was dealing with The Observer. But it proved impossible to establish any link between Images, Words and AFA at the time.

AFAPRESS SUBSIDIARIES. Among the companies dealing with the UK and US media, as can be seen from AFAPress' website, are United World (USA Today) Summit Publications (The New York Times), etc, etc.

AFA' history is one of phenomenal growth in the mid 1990s, when it went from a Madrid-based operation with around 15 employees, to its height in the late 1990s, when it had around 200 people working around the globe, with offices in Washington, and London. The collapse of the Soviet Union was key to its growth, as was the end of dictatorship in Latin America. However, the Asian crisis of 1998, and the impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001, hit AFA's hard, and it cut back its operations sharply. At this time there were a number of disputes after the company attempted to sack sales teams without compensation or paying them commissions. the company has again attempted to cut back its workforce, and is currently in dispute with several journalists it has not paid for work dating back to late 2008 for several publications, among them The Daily Telegraph "The Pulse" section, which is published by AFA. There have been a number of reports in the British media about what is seen by many as highly secretive organization throughout 2009. Recently, a UK based financial journalist, Felix Salmon, who works for Reuters, has begun to take an interest in AFA's activities, attracting comment from former employees and readers of publications such as UK daily The Independent, puzzled at why a left-leaning publication would include special advertising reports on countries like Botswana or Congo (again, see link to AFAPress website.

Little is known of the main people working for AFA, but back in the 1990s during its bid to establish a stronger presence in London, it recruited former Observer editor Donald Trelford, as well as other veteran Fleet Street journalists. Its Madrid operation is headed by long-standing employees Carmen García Benito, Pablo Berzal, and Pedro Berastaín.

References http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2006/10/indys-odd-business-bedfellow.html

http://www.felixsalmon.com/000452.html

http://www.felixsalmon.com/2006_07.html

http://doscortasunalarga.blogspot.com/2007/06/un-empresario.html

www.afa-press.com