In response to The Starbucks Affair Addis Fortune July 16, 2007 Binding the Terms of the Starbucks Agreement Dear Editor, Mr. Shlomo Bachrach’s commentary last week headlined, “The Starbucks Affair” [Volume 8, Number 375, July 8, 2007] contained numerous inaccuracies, some of which warrant comment. Mr. Bachrach, whose consultancy with Light Years IP ended in February 2007, has no firsthand knowledge of the negotiations that paved the way for the agreement reached between Ethiopia and Starbucks. His speculative remarks about this process and its upshot were wildly off the mark. What is more, his tendentious narrations and gratuitous scepticism raise serious issues of professional ethics. Mr. Bachrach went so far as to cast doubt on the very existence of a binding contract between Starbucks and Ethiopia: “The announcement raises some questions. It does not say, for example, that an agreement was signed; only that it was ‘concluded.’ ” What motivates this line of interrogation is altogeth...