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Feb 27, 2010 Turning over a new leaf By Gary LaMoshi JAKARTA - Last time Asia had an economic crisis, Mark Hanusz was in the middle of it. Newly transferred to Jakarta by Swiss Bank Corporation in 1997, Hanusz was part of a team that helped collapse Indonesia's currency from 2,500 rupiah to one US dollar on the eve of the crisis to more than 15,000 rupiah per dollar at its nadir. Indonesia's economy tanked, much of its newly minted middle class was blasted back into poverty, and, ultimately, its government crumbled. In the wake of the collapse, Hanusz felt he needed to give something back to Indonesia. His search for Jerry Maguire-style redemption began on the fairways of Java, ran through hundreds of packs of clove cigarettes, and ultimately delivered Hanusz to found Equinox Publishing. The American from Toledo, Ohio, now runs the largest English-language book publisher in Indonesia. Equinox's catalogue features more than 60 titles from contemporary fiction to a Classic Indonesia series reprinting academic studies dating to the 1950s, many of them unavailable in Indonesia during President Suharto's 32 years of authoritarian rule. Equinox was also the first Indonesian publisher to offer the previously banned works of award-winning author Pramoedya Ananta Toer in his homeland and the first English translation of sastra wangi (fragrant literature) trendsetter Ayu Utami's groundbreaking novel Saman. A confessed techie, Hanusz expanded Equinox into digital downloads and podcasts of Indonesian rock and roll, plus iPhone applications for Jakartans on the go. Because publishing uses "silly amounts of paper", Hanusz made Equinox the first publisher in Indonesia, and one of only a few in Asia, to use only post-consumer recycled paper for all its books. He's also become an advocate for reforestation in Indonesia, bringing Nokia in as a partner for NEWtrees, a corporate tree planting project with the WWF, and recently released My Baby Tree, an iPhone planting app for individuals. NEWtrees is just another way for Hanusz to keep turning over new leaves in his adopted country. Gary LaMoshi: What did you know about Indonesia before you arrived in Jakarta in early 1997? Mark Hanusz: Not much. I made two trips here as a Zurich-based stockbroker and was familiar with the capital markets, but knew very little about the culture or people. GLaM: When I took my first bite of nasi goreng [Indonesian fried rice], I said, "Wow, this is a country I want to know more about." What was your "nasi goreng moment"? Hanusz: The Jakarta branch tried to recruit me in January 1997 but before I confirmed I requested a quick (and clandestine) trip to come visit the office for a few days. I had to keep it secret from my superiors in Zurich as I was sure they wouldn't approve the move. Some members of the Jakarta office took me out to some nightclubs in Kota the evening I arrived and within an hour - after feeling the incredible energy and masses of people - I realized Jakarta was the place to be. GLaM: You arrived in Jakarta during the final days of the Suharto boom. What was striking about that time? Were there signs that the boom was about to go bust? MH: I arrived at a time when the market seemed to be growing exponentially (indeed, due to the interest from clients, the local office needed a new salesman on the desk). Everyone seemed to be flush with cash and the currency and politics were very stable. There were no signs that anything was amiss. GLaM: Tell me about your role in driving down the rupiah during the 1997 the Asian economic crisis? What was the mindset of foreign bankers at that time? MH: The perpetual growth we assumed was based on a stable currency. As long as the rupiah (or baht, or peso or ringgit) was stable, the US dollar debt that companies and countries had was serviceable. Once these currencies weakened, suddenly the cost of servicing US dollar debt increased, and in the rupiah's case, increased by five or six times. The sudden depreciation of currencies led to extraordinary volatility in the currency markets, and traders love volatility. The currency markets were very thinly traded as well, so it didn't take much capital to knock it 5% a day - which is what my bank's FX desk in Singapore (with others) was able to do. I was on the equity side and wasn't involved in Singapore's FX decisions, but I was in the morning conference calls and was fully aware of what they were doing. GLaM: After you left the bank, you decided to see Java, play golf and write a book about kretek [clove] cigarettes. That doesn't seem like the behavior of a man burdened by many regrets at that point. MH: I was offered a transfer to Singapore, which I declined. I had been in the bank for seven years and was burnt out. I wanted to stay in Indonesia and try to understand what was going on outside of Jakarta. So many colleagues of mine has left Indonesia without seeing any part of Indonesia outside of Jakarta and Bali - and I didn't want the same thing to happen to me. At that time - fall 1998 - the self-esteem of the Indonesian nation was really, really low. The currency was in the toilet, the May 1998 riots were fresh in everyone's mind, there was a new president, there were massive fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which caused smoke to blanket Singapore and KL. Everything that could have gone wrong seemed to, and I thought it was my duty to come up with something that Indonesia was good at - as I convinced myself I did have some role in the country's demise. The problem is I didn't know what it was or how to find it. The answer came when a friend gave me a golf map of Java and I decided golf courses would be my rest stops as I made a month-long tour of Java by car. Along the way I began to collect packs of kretek cigarettes as souvenirs of my journey and after two weeks I had close to 800. Somewhere between Malang and Yogyakarta I got the idea to write a book about this incredible homegrown phenomenon. I was very fortunate that I was able to fund the project myself so set up a publishing company to do so. GLaM: What's different between what you're striving for at Equinox and run-of-the-mill corporate social responsibility? MH: One of the great things about having zero publishing experience is that you are able to try out new things all the time - sort of a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" mentality. I was never shackled with old-school beliefs or ideas or training so while I appear to be unconventional, the reality is I don't really know what the convention is. GLaM: Did the idea of redemption lead you to publishing or did you find ways to make publishing redeeming? What's behind the name Equinox for the firm? MH: I wrote and published Kretek as I felt I owed the country something. I pestered the great writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer enough times and managed to get him to write the book's foreword. After Kretek came out, I felt a responsibility and deep gratitude to him that I wanted to make his books available - they were banned at the time. So the first three books I published after my own were books written by him. The name Equinox comes from several themes: I worked in equities, and I arrived in Indonesia on March 21, 1997 (the vernal equinox). Coincidentally, my last day at the bank was September 21, 1998 (the autumnal equinox). The company got its licenses on September 21, 1998 and the first book was published on March 21, 2000. So the vernal and autumnal equinoxes are quite auspicious for me. GLaM: Equinox also publishes its Classic Indonesia series of academic works about Indonesia. What can we learn about Indonesia today from works written four or five decades ago? MH: Remember the old saying, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it"? Well it might come to people as a surprise but Indonesia has a long and rich history, and there is a lot we can learn from it. Issues such as foreign relations, nationalism, regional autonomy, et cetera, are not new debates in Indonesia. They have been around for hundreds of years. But one problem has been getting access to books that covered these issues as they are all long out of print. By republishing these texts - in an innovative way, I might add - we have removed one of the problems. Getting people to read and learn from them is another problem I am working on at the moment. GLaM: You're also taking steps to make your business greener. Tell me about them and how it's part of giving something back to Indonesia? MH: About a year ago we decided to use recycled paper for our books. As a publisher, I use silly amounts of paper and figured out a way to use it without raising my prices. I figured if I could do that then it might set an example for other companies to embrace recycled paper as well. I am also involved in the WWF program NEWtrees, which plants trees in Kalimantan and Lombok. GLaM: Tell me more about your involvement with the NewTrees project. How did you decide to get involved with that particular project? MH: The idea came to me when I started using recycled paper for books. I made a deal with a local importer to import a container of paper from Denmark and in order to fill it the mill suggested we try some of their A4 recycled photocopy paper. I checked with some colleagues and found there was indeed interest, but they wanted it to be carbon-neutral so we devised an offset with WWF [World Wide Fund for Nature] to plant four trees per 160 reams (one pallet) [of paper]. After some thought, I came up with a system to geocode the trees with precise latitude and longitude coordinates and used a Nokia N95 phone (with integrated GPS) to do this. My contact at WWF Indonesia, Nazir Foead, met up with Nokia Asia's Environmental Head, Francis Cheong, and explained what we were doing with their phones. Francis was so excited he committed Nokia to plant 100,000 trees and be a founding member of the program. "NEW" in NEWtrees stands for Nokia, Equinox Publishing, and WWF. WWF already had a planting program in Kalimantan and since my wife was from there I thought it would be the perfect place to start the planting. Since then we have expanded it to include a protected forest on the slopes of Mount Rinjani, Lombok. GLaM: WWF says you've been an ambassador for the project, promoting it to bring in other companies. Who've been your biggest gets? MH: We have many corporate clients - local and international - like Toyota, Indosat, Garuda, Suryapalace Jaya and Coca-cola. GLaM: I also know you're involved with iPhone applications. What does Nokia have to say about that? MH: They are thrilled, actually, and want me to work with them to develop apps for the Symbian platform as well. GLaM: Seriously, how do phone applications fit into your other interests? Of all the adjectives associated with the iPhone, I don't believe I've heard it called redeeming. The iPhone doesn't seem to be particularly suited to Indonesia, since it's expensive and wasn't even officially available until well after you began marketing applications. MH: It is a logical progression of my businesses actually. Publishing books here required me to figure out how to get them available around the world, like through Amazon.com, and then I expanded this to music through iTunes, and when Apple called for developers for iPhone it just seemed to make sense to get into this business as well. I love the concept of a Flat Earth - being able to develop something here, be it books or music or apps, and have hyper-efficient global distribution. That's why we are also converting all of our titles to Amazon's Kindle eBook format. Once we submit a title to Amazon, it is available for download all over the world in two hours, something that's obviously impossible with hard copies. GLaM: At what point do you think your debt to Indonesia will be repaid? MH: I think it was repaid with the publication of Kretek, actually, but I still continue to get much joy living and working here. In some small way I'd like to think the country appreciates what I do as well. Longtime editor of investor rights advocate eRaider.com, Gary LaMoshihas written for Slate and Salon.com, and works an adviser to Writing Camp (www.writingcamp.net). He first visited Indonesia in 1994 and has tracking its progress ever since. (Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
