Native Corporations' Far Reach: The 13 Native regional corporations look beyond Alaska's borders for investment opportunities.

• Author: Stricker, Julie

Today's Native regional corporations have footholds in businesses from government contracts to real estate to high-tech industries to high-end resorts. Their subsidiaries are found from Alaska's North Slope to Antarctica, across the United States and in countries spanning the globe.

The 13 Alaska Native regional corporations were created in 1971 under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a piece of landmark legislation that distributed 44 million acres of land and nearly $1 billion among Alaska's Native groups to settle land claims and speed construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

Initially, most of the corporations invested primarily in Alaska-based natural resource industries and most fell on hard times when the economy crashed. Success meant a new strategy, one that looked beyond Alaska's borders.

The fact is, corporation officials say, there are only so many business opportunities in a state of 650,000 people with few developed industries. Going global just makes good business sense. "I don't think it would have been possible for us to have grown the way we have without investing Outside," says Mark Kroloff, chief operating officer of Cook Inlet Region Inc., one of the most successful of the regional corporations, with $379.69 million in revenue for 2000.

CIRI has holdings in tourism, telecommunications, construction services and real estate, among others, with offices across the country. It has used a strategy of forming partnerships with leading companies in industries it wishes to invest in, the latest of which is Lake Las Vegas, a master-planned luxury community and destination resort in Las Vegas, 17 miles from the Strip.

"Usually if you have strong, capable partners, and you yourself try to be a strong, capable partner, you improve your chances of the investment being successful, as well as sharing in the risk if you're not," Kroloff says.

For example, CIRI has three investments at Lake Las Vegas: as an investor in the Hyatt Regency, a Ritz Carleton resort and a high-end casino, the latter two of which are still under construction. The high quality of the other investors is one of the things that attracted CIRI to the project, Kroloff says.

"One of the things we like about those investments ... is that we're associated with one of the top operators in one of the top markets," he says.

"America's Sweethearts," starring Julia Roberts, was filmed at the Hyatt Regency, Kroloff notes. CIRI also has made lucrative investments outside...