September 2, 2016

American Chamber of Commerce president sees its role as moving Ukraine forward

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Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.

KYIV – Andy Hunder is so busy these days that he has to cancel his attendance at ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new factories or offices that foreign companies are opening in Ukraine. On July 1, Mr. Hunder, the president of the country’s American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), couldn’t attend a door-opening event for the network marketing company Amway in Lviv.

His schedule was booked.

The previous day he witnessed the launch of Uber taxi service in Kyiv. The following day, British-Dutch Unilever created 100 jobs by opening a tea-making factory in Hostomel, 30 kilometers northwest of Kyiv.

And he recently learned that Leoni, a German cable and harnessing manufacturing firm, is opening a second plant in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast town of Kolomyia, in addition to its plant in Lviv.

Noting that American agricultural giant Bunge broke ground last month on a $280 million seaport facility in the Mykolayiv Oblast, Mr. Hunder said that economically things are picking up.

“The macro is we’ve hit rock bottom, and the question is how quickly can we rebound. This year we’re looking at 1 to 1.5 percent gross domestic product growth,” the native Londoner of Ukrainian parents told The Ukrainian Weekly at his office on August 31. “It’s minimal, but it’s the trend.”

Indeed, GDP last year plunged by 10 percent, and an additional 7 percent in 2014. This year, Ukraine’s economy is slated to reach only $87 billion with foreign direct investment accounting for just 2.9 percent, according to Kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital.

“But 2008 was the peak [year] so we’ve a long way to go,” Mr. Hunder realistically said, referring to that year’s economic output of $180 billion.

That’s partially why 16 months ago AmCham’s board commissioned the global recruitment firm Hudson to seek out a leader for the influential business association’s 630 member companies comprising some of the world’s biggest multinational firms and strategic investors.

Mr. Hunder’s predecessor, Californian Bernard Casey, had lasted only about nine months. He harbored pro-Russian sentiments, according to his Facebook posts, including opposing the Euro-Maidan revolution and referring to Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine as a civil conflict.

Thus, Mr. Hunder is charged with “getting the voice of business across to government, to have a one-voice policy,” to understand the needs of businesses for them “to grow and get new investment into Ukraine.”

He added: “We’re here, we want to change the country, and we believe this is a good platform to move the country forward.”

In fact, Mr. Hunder, 45, has made it his business to help improve Ukraine for much of his life despite not having a business degree.

His odyssey started at the age of 13 when he convinced his parents to send him to the Pontifical Minor Ukrainian Seminary in Rome after hearing a priest give a lecture at a summer camp run by the Ukrainian American Youth Association.

“At the time… I was considering becoming a priest,” Mr. Hunder said.

He eventually spent 10 years in Rome, graduating with a degree in philosophy and theology from the St. Sophia Seminary. After spending two years studying the insurance industry starting in 1994 back in London, Mr. Hunder visited Ukraine, where he says he had “many friends.”

He got a job as a producer of an English-language television program and soon became the show’s anchorman. His profile caught the attention of the foreign CEO of Ukraine Mobile Communications, who offered him the job of communications manager. After seven years, the Londoner took the same job at pharmaceutical behemoth GlaxoSmithKline.

He never doubted his ability of finding gainful employment despite his liberal arts background.

“In life, do what you love,” Mr. Hunder said. “If you do that, you’ll do it well, and money will come to you.”

Working in Ukraine also changed the romantic perception he had of a country that he described as “houses with gardens and orchards” complete with “vyshyvanky, sharovary and folk dancing.”

“This was reality, waking up Monday morning, going to the office, seeing stuff… it was a pragmatic approach of living in the country,” Mr. Hunder said. “I decided that this was something I wanted to do, and I haven’t looked back.”

During the disgraced presidency of Viktor Yanukovych starting in 2010, Mr. Hunder had first headed government relations in London for the law firm Magisters and then Sayenko Kharenko, both Ukraine-based attorney firms.

Simultaneously, he headed the Ukrainian Institute in London at the behest of Bishop Borys Gudziak, who at the time was rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

Again Mr. Hunder gained exposure by holding rallies in support of the Euro-Maidan revolution. He made headlines by picketing the $200 million penthouse of Ukraine’s richest billionaire, Rinat Akhmetov, who was a close ally of Mr. Yanukovych. He did the same to then-Prime Minister David Cameron, calling on the British government to sanction the Yanukovych administration for gross human rights violations.

“He [Akhmetov] sent people around the building apologizing to the neighbors for the inconveniences,” said Mr. Hunder.

When the revolution reached a crescendo in mid-February, Mr. Hunder realized that there weren’t that many native-English speakers who could explain what was happening in Ukraine. He started giving interviews to the Western media, including CNN, BBC and Sky News.

“I did seven live interviews in one day… I did over 100 interviews on the big TV channels… There was a massive niche and need to get the Ukrainian voice across,” he said.

When he returned to Ukraine as the president of AmCham in April 2015, Mr. Hunder noticed that the “place is changing.”

“It was a new society, civil society has really changed, there’s no going back,” he added.

He set about doing damage control to both re-establish the business association’s reputation and restore good relations with the U.S. Embassy and other associations in-country and abroad while being “extra careful not to step on any mines.”

Still, the same problems plague AmCham’s member companies: corruption, lack of rule of law and pervasive bureaucracy, according to the association’s president. Citing a rolling survey that the group conducts of the business climate, Mr. Hunder said, “in terms of corruption, it’s the courts, the legal system is still very much corrupt and that leads to assets being stolen.”

Yet the group is reinvigorated.

Last year, it conducted more than 700 meetings on government policy. It writes position papers on every piece of legislation that either has an economic element or affects business activity.

“We work with the presidential administration, the prime minister, the ministries of economy, finance, infrastructure and health… We have committees on tax, customs, agriculture, banking and finance, health care, IT, mobile phones, we have a special committee on seeds, it’s across the board,” he said.

Combined with rampant graft, Russia’s war against Ukraine compounds the country’s negative international image, which Mr. Hunder calls “distorted.”

“People think that there are tanks in the streets of Kyiv,” he said, adding that Ukraine needs more good news stories in the Western media.

Not forgetting his philosophical roots, Mr. Hunder likes to quote others on his message to businesses or people contemplating making the move to Ukraine.

“Dream big,” he said, citing the late Major Archbishop Josyf Slipyj.

Switching to Mark Twain, the British Ukrainian said: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so.”

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