Richard Sherwin was waiting for us in the Sheraton Palace Hotel lobby. He instantly smiled at us with the smile of an old and good friend, the smile which in fact all Americans give you when they meet you.  Later, over a cup of coffee and friendly talk we learned that Dick Sherwin is indeed a true and devoted friend of Georgia. We refer to him as Dick Sherwin, this is what his friends call him. And this is how he is addressed in Georgia.

Richard Sherwin is the president of  Metromedia International Telecommunications - one of the world leaders in media and communications. The company is engaged in 42  different projects world-wide. In Georgia, besides Magticom, the Metromedia International Telecommunications has participated in establishing Paging 1, Ayety TV, Radio Fortuna and the Georgian Telecom.

We met Richard Sherwin in the foyer of the Sheraton Palace Hotel where he usually stays when visiting Tbilisi. When he first visited the place it was still called the Metechi Palace. It was when war and rampant crime engulfed the country. During one of his stays, Dick  and his wife found themselves in a shoot-out in the middle of the  hotel lobby, but they never lost their faith in Georgia. Dick Sherwin remembers those days with the same feeling of profound pain that Georgians have, but he views the future of the country with more optimism than many Georgians do.

‘I first thought about Georgia as a country of my potential future engagement some ten years ago. At that time I have been running a telecommunications company in the United States. I loved that company and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I had enough money that I could live comfortably without working for a period of time. Somebody asked me if I would be willing to go to Czechoslovakia to determine whether or not the sale of telephone licence was available. So I decided to go. Through various contacts in  the United States I learned that there was some interest in Georgia to have Americans visit and invest in telecommunications projects. So I decided that I would combine the trip, go to Czechoslovakia, as it turns out Moscow and also to Georgia.

I came to Tbilisi in June 1990. Over the course of time I got pretty friendly with a number of people. I liked how they handed themselves. So we made a decision to begin a cable television service here in Tbilisi which is now  Ayety-TV.
And that's how all started...

Later was the war. Actually the war came first. It was very difficult to call here. Finally my friends called me and said: 'the war is over and we should still do business.'

My wife and I came back in March. It was terrible. We went down Rustaveli Avenue. The old Tbilisi Hotel where we used to stay was destroyed. The building that I worked in, which was then the Telecommunications Ministry, was
completely destroyed. My office there was just ruined.

Still, we decided to go ahead and begin the service. In June I came back to Georgia and we installed the equipment for cable television at the tower. Soon I made the decision to use the same partnership - the Ministry of Communications and the guys I worked with to install the paging system, because nobody could communicate with each other and this was one way that people could communicate. So two months later we installed the paging system.

In July 1996, I came to Tbilisi and met Gia Jokhtaberidze and Zurab Gojiashvili for the first time. Gia was extremely interested in implementing the GSM system. He had the licence and I said: 'Why not?' That's how Magticom started to become a company.

Today we have a large customer base both in cable television and paging but I think that the biggest business clearly will be Magticom. The reason for that is that the telecommunications sector in Georgia has not been well developed and people here desperately want to talk on the telephone, to communicate with each other. So I think that the telephone business is the best business.

When I first came to Georgia and I saw the difference between the way I lived and the way people here live I decided that I would like to do something about that. I have five children and I want my children to grow up in the world that doesn't have conflict. One of the major reasons for conflict is that there are differences in the economic conditions between two countries or two places. So it seemed to me that if I could in some small way help countries of the former Soviet Union improve their economic condition by opening up the window, so people could see how others really live and, at the same time, provide jobs that were meaningful and paid real money, that would be a contribution made to the future of my children.

To balance that with the fact that I have investors, shareholders who want to see return on their money, two things occur: one is I wanted to improve the conditions but at the same time I had to make profit.
Sometimes you have to look at your life and you have to say: 'What  is it that I am doing?' or 'Why do I want to do this?' So what makes people happy is constant improvement and the same is in business. What makes me happy is constant improvement.

Today we have close to 600 000 subscribers in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. All of them are of various services. There are 15 radio stations, two of which are here in Georgia: radio "Fortuna" and Russian-language radio "Era".

The whole idea is to continue to add more ventures, to add more subscribers, to add more revenues, make my shareholders happy, make all the people who work for us happy.

The economic condition in the country contributes to the kind of business climate you have. Now when Georgia has come out of this decline, things have improved tremendously. The businesses still require investments but the revenues are growing and soon each of these businesses will effectively be on their own.

You know what Americans call me? "Sherwin-aia", sometimes "Sherwin-adze", because Georgia was one of the first places that I came to. I developed many friendships here. Georgia is the place like no other that I have ever been to. The people are extremely warm. They welcome foreigners here like in no other place in the world. Because of their warmth and their friendship it is a very comfortable place to come.’