When the staff of Transnational Automotive Group Inc. learned in September that the company was a finalist for the U.S. State Department’s Award for Corporate Excellence, they knew very little about the honor. So, imagine their surprise when they learned in November that their Woodland Hills-based transportation company became one of two winners out of a pool of more than five dozen to snag the award, established in 1999 to recognize American businesses who have been model corporate citizens throughout the world. “We were shocked,” TAUG Chief Financial Officer Seid Sadat recalled of receiving word of the win. “This is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. When we got nominated, we had no idea we were going to win it.” TAUG CEO and Chairman of the Board Ralph Thomson echoed Sadat’s sentiments. “No, heavens, we had no clue,” he insisted. “We were only one year in the ground, if you will, for our project activity.” The project in question is TAUG’s work providing what it describes as safe, affordable transportation in the West African nation of Cameroon, thereby contributing to an improved quality of life in the former French colony. It all began in 2006, when TAUG established and began operating LeBus, Cameroon’s government supported mass transportation urban bus system, and LeCar, Cameroon’s inter-city rural bus system. “Cameroon had a huge demand pool,” Thomson said of implementing such a system there. “They had not had any meaningful urban bus transportation in 15 years.” Now that TAUG has won the ACE, the company is in talks with other African countries to provide similar services for them. Those pending negotiations, along with the company’s anticipated 2007 revenues of $11 million, indicate that TAUG is off to a promising start. The company was just founded in 2005. The Business Journal spoke with Sadat, Thomson and company General Counsel David M. Browne about TAUG’s swift rise to prominence and how a company can thrive while serving others. Question: Why was Cameroon chosen as the site to launch the project? Seid Sadat: Everybody says the toughest place to be in sub-Saharan Africa is Cameroon. We’ve also been told that if you can do business in Cameroon, you can do business anywhere else. I’m not sure if we chose Cameroon or if Cameroon chose us. It happened that was the first opportunity that came up, and that was the first contract that was signed. Q: What makes Cameroon a tough place to do business? SS: The reason being, there are no foreign businesses operating in Cameroon other than for purposes of extraction. There’s been a couple of other foreign countries that have come in but not Americans. To open a business, to get all the licenses in Cameroon takes about 47 days and 13 processes. To open up a business in California, there’s about one or two processes, and it would probably take you a couple of days. David Browne: The colonial system of law in Europe tends to be bureaucratic, inflexible. Also, these countries all inherited a legal structure from their colonial masters that was intended to constrain them. It was set up poorly on purpose by the French, not only when they were in control but when they nominally gave independence, they kept their claws in these countries by the legal mechanisms they left in place, and it’s tough for these countries to mature out of that. They have no model. Q: What economic impact has your project had on the lives of Cameroonians? SS: We’re the only bus system that is on a schedule. When we say 8 o’clock, we leave at 8 o’clock,five people on the bus or 44 people. That is a unique concept in Cameroon because what they do normally, all our competitors,they wait ’til the bus is full and then they take off. When you talk about changing lives, an attorney or a businessperson in Douala can now go to the capital city of Yaound & #233;, leave at 5:30 a.m. They know that they’ll get there at 8:30 a.m., go to their court and be back in the afternoon. They can set their schedule, where they never could have done that. Q: What mode of transportation was commonly used in Cameroon prior to TAUG’s bus systems? SS: The only source of transportation is cabs. The problem with cabs,their price is just an offer. In the morning it could be $1. In the afternoon it could be $2, mid-day it could be $0.50, you never know. The cab driver can take you, let’s say to Van Nuys Boulevard, and say, ‘If you want me to take you two blocks more, you’ve got to give me another buck,’ so what do you do? Q: How many Cameroonians do you employ? SS: We have 750 employees. In a country that has 35, 40 percent unemployment, that’s huge. Our drivers make about 200,000-250,000 CFA, [Cameroonian currency, which stands for Coop & #233;ration financi & #269;re en Afrique centrale], and our competitors pay less than half of that. In those cultures, for every one person that’s working, there’s seven or eight people that are getting benefits from it. They’re really getting that money to these other people, so they can buy food, just basic needs stuff. Q: Are there any other ways in which TAUG has made an economic impact? SS: We just two weeks ago started a line that goes from one side of the city to the other where there’s a university. Now, just the first week, actually, we’ve transported 39,000 people in four buses. We’ve changed so much that the cab people had to drop their prices. It’s an area like Northridge, where everybody has to live close by there in order to go to college because they can’t afford to travel back and forth, so it makes the rentals very expensive. Now, if I can live in another area 20 minutes away and take the bus to get there, guess what, we’ve affected the rental market. People have to lower their rents because they’re competing with other areas. Q: Now, let’s discuss the ACE. Ralph Thomson: The people who won it in the past are pretty stunning and strong corporate names. We’re with the companies like the Microsofts, the Citibanks, the Hewlett-Packards,those large, high-end groups. The award is a meaningful thing, and it’s a motivator for us. Q: What was the actual ceremony like? Did you interact with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice? SS: Oh, yeah. We were in a room that she probably sees all heads of state in. I imagine [French President] Nicolas Sarkozy was in that room the next day. RT: No question about it, he was. She [Rice] came off of an airplane, her private plane from very tough negotiations in Iraq, in Israel and in Turkey, came off that plane and presided over that affair for us with literally flying overnight. It’s just an amazing good symbol of her and the State Department’s feeling for this award and the importance of it, and I don’t think you could overestimate that. She flew in especially for Sarkozy the day after that but made it a point to be there the day before for us, and we thought that was quite meaningful. Q: You received the award on Nov. 6. What impact has this had on you since then? DB: On an immediate day-to-day level, not a whole lot, but, in terms of anyone new we meet or, for that matter, anybody we’re dealing with right now, it’s a huge badge of credibility. We don’t have to explain who we are or try to convince them that we know what we’re doing. We have the State Department certifying that in their view, we’re the most credible, in terms of their goals, company in the world in our class.
