SEIZING OPPORTUNITY

SEIZING OPPORTUNITY
STEPHANIE MURPHY, Daily News Business and Real Estate Writer

Even at 83, savvy South End entrepreneur Robert Ross is seldom caught napping at the switch, ever alert to any potentially profitable venture that tickles his antenna.

Take Ysnore. The anti-snoring nasal spray emerged in China a few years ago, and Ross bought the patent. A subsidiary of his Eastern Europe Inc. trading company markets the homeopathic nose drops at Eckerd, Winn-Dixie, Rite-Aid and other retail outlets in Florida and around the country."It only works about 65 percent of the time, but we get orders for $350,000 a month," said Ross, who is often called "Dr. Ross" for the honorary doctorate he gained from an optometry school.

Eckerd has carried the product in its stores for several years, said public relations manager Tami Alderman.

"It's one of our better-selling sleep aids," she said.

One of Ross' most enduring creations was the Ross University School of Medicine in Portsmouth, Dominica, which he founded in 1979 with a West Indies government charter. He sold it in April 2000 to Weld/Leeds Investment Group, which also started the Edison Group schools in New York for a reported $150 million.

Erasing quota-created shortage

Starting with 11 students who were known as "The Castaways," the once-upstart school now enrolls more than 1,400 a year and estimates it has more students from the United States than most U.S. medical schools. The unlikely notion of opening a medical school arose because one of his employees lamented to Ross about his son being excluded from quota-happy U.S. universities.

"Education was not my cup of tea then; I was in petroleum. What did I know about medicine? Zip. We fought the American medical establishment all through the 1980s, and it only turned around in the 1990s, when our graduates were the proof. But in 1998, I decided the guy upstairs had my passport, so I decided to sell," Ross said.

In 1983, a Forbes thumbnail on offshore doctors said, "One thing is clear: Ross U. doctors are very welcome in hospitals in run-down areas like Brooklyn's Sunset Park and Jersey City, snubbed by graduates of the better-established schools. Says an administrator at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn: 'They are a godsend'."

Humble start in Michigan

His office at 2875 S. Ocean Blvd. is a short drive from his Palm Beach home. In his office are memorabilia and photos of several U.S. presidents, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and other dignitaries.

Ross relocated most of his business operations from New York when he moved to Palm Beach 10 years ago. He has wintered here for 38 years and bought a condominium after many visits to The Breakers, he said.

The deal builder began as a paper boy in his hometown of Detroit. His father died when Ross was 8, and he worked to help support his mother and five siblings. He studied business courses at the University of Michigan.

He sold pharmaceutical products for a wholesaler, and after his military service during World War II, he sold electronics and eventually made his first fortune trading commodities.

On the suggestion of his then-lawyer - the late CIA Director William Casey - Ross took an interest in markets that were opening up in the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s.

Ross had a facility for dealing with the Soviets while the Iron Curtain was still welded together. Sporting a Churchill demeanor in homburg, overcoat and plump cigar, he traded ore, petroleum and a slew of industrial commodities. Divisions of his Eastern Europe Inc. - at one time a $100 million a year operation - were purveyors of lumber, plastics, grains, fertilizer, textiles, electronics, aluminum and other metals.

Education via the Internet

"With Dr. Ross, the first word that comes to mind would be entrepreneurial, and to that end, a visionary entrepreneur," said Richard Ditizio, managing director of Citigroup Private Bank, 241 Royal Palm Way, who has known Ross for more than six years. "Despite his chronological age, he has the energy and drive of a much younger man. He's engaging and always interesting. He sees opportunity where others don't. He has enough life experience to be really opportunistic, to create something out of nothing."

Following Ross' decision to sell the medical school in Dominica and a companion veterinary school in St. Kitts, he got interested in a version of electronic education and dubbed it International Distance Learning Inc.

"It's not a new idea - I arrange for U.S. universities to teach their curriculum via the Internet and offer dual degrees, so students can get jobs either in their own country or go on to work in the Western world," Ross said. Worldwide distance learning is on its way to becoming a $1 trillion industry, as some targeted fields of study expand in this country as well, he said.

Alumni of Ross University were the inspiration for another brainchild, International Nurses Recruiting LLC, Ross said.

"Our graduates kept telling me there was a shortage of nurses all over. In the past, this was because nurses left hospitals for more lucrative private-duty work," he said.

Salaries improved after an influx of nurses from other countries, but there's a new shortage caused by mature nurses reaching retirement age and not enough younger ones entering the profession, he said. As with the political friction his medical school caused with mainstream U.S. physicians, International Nurses Recruiting is making its share of waves with the nursing establishment.

During the Clinton administration, a nursing association lobbied against the concept, but Ross began making headway to dilute their objections after meeting with some Washington lawmakers in May, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration. At a hearing May 22, Brownback quoted research from the American Organization of Nurse Executives, who referred to the nursing shortage emerging nationwide and the anticipated rapid increase in age-related retirements over the next five to 15 years.

Also in May, the Wisconsin Association of Homes and Services for the Aging published a paper on recruitment of foreign nurses "because of the severe staffing shortage" facing its nursing facilities. Representatives from 14 organizations met to hear presentations on recruiting nurses from The Philippines, and how to solve the immigration snags associated with their employment.

Efforts to expand Ross' plans have been on hold since Sept. 11, he said. Meanwhile, he is in talks with Tenet Healthcare Corp. to contract for nurses from other countries at its hospitals. Elsewhere, he networks with hospital conglomerates who pay his company fees like a head-hunter. Applicants hire an immigration attorney to file their paperwork, and the hospitals act as sponsor.

"I've been in business internationally for 50 years, so it's easy for me to find [the applicants]. I'm well-known to ministers of health and finance," who refer promising candidates to his firm, Ross said. "They sign a three-year contract with a hospital, HMO or [physicians' group] and make $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

Three exams are involved in the approval process: reading knowledge of English, verbal proficiency in English and an internationally regarded test for nursing skills that is honored in 41 countries, he said.

Not long after he launched his nursing enterprise, Ross created a similar program for pharmacists and teachers, he said.

Purchasing a bit of royalty

Not for profit but for a perk, Ross indulged in a royal title, Lord of the Manor of Halton Lea, Northumberland, when the privilege became available at a London auction five years ago.

"The House of Lords auctions the titles, and this one dates to 1485, before Henry VIII," Ross said. "We have some friends who suggested I buy it because you always get a good table at restaurants."

He also got an extra flag for his limousine, which resembles those carrying diplomats around the world's capitals.

Robert Ross' Palm Beach office contains a collection of signed photos of leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev and former presidents Ford, Carter and Bush.

- smurphy@pbdailynews.com