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Jock Mendoza-Wilson, 47 #7 Most Influential

Jock Mendoza-Wilson, director of international and investor relations for Ukraine’s most powerful holding company, System Capital Management, doesn’t think he is so influential.

But as the Western face of the country’s wealthiest tycoon, billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, this PR guru from Scotland most certainly has clout.

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Mendoza-Wilson came to Ukraine in 2005, when the owners of the nation’s most lucrative industrial assets were beginning to come out into the open.

System Capital Management “was a pioneer in changing the way Ukrainian companies behaved and communicated,” he told the Kyiv Post in his characteristically measured fashion.

Before Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, most Ukrainian billionaires wouldn’t even acknowledge ownership of their companies, much less attempt to project a benign public image or dabble in philanthropy.

“I was one of the first foreigners doing the job.”

– Jock Mendoza-Wilson.

But with serious holdings in the United States and European Union, in addition to its multi-sector empire at home, Akhmetov’s company needed an international approach to the governments and multinational institutions that it engages in its day-to-day operations.

Having run his own communications consultancy in London, and handled corporate and government relations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, Mendoza-Wilson fits the bill nicely.

“I was one of the first foreigners doing the job,” he recalls.

The stout, bespectacled Brit, however, isn’t a flak by training, but rather an economist with a specialization in finance.

He also chairs the United Nation’s Global Compact in Ukraine, which is intended to promote companies’ responsibility to stakeholders in the broadest sense of the word: i.e. the community it works in, its employees, etc.

When asked about his accomplishment to date, Mendoza-Wilson stays true to corporate form, giving all the credit to the holding he represents. “Quite frankly, the role I’ve played has been part of a team,” he said.