The TRUST Investment Bank decided to open representative office in Kiev. The agency was assigned with laying the foundation for creating a support group among the republic’s elite, of rapidly establishing direct contracts between bank representatives and managers of Ukrainian enterprises – potential clients, and of ensuring the required level of Ukrainian media coverage.

The assignment’s solution involved overcoming not only the traditional set of difficulties, such as assembling the heads of big business at a business presentation, but also accommodating the specific nature of Ukraine’s social and business environment. In particular, a Russian bank’s arrival in Ukraine could have been received within the context of ambivalent relations between Ukraine and Russia – thus being treated as an attempt to interfere in the nation’s economy – or as something that might directly contradict Ukraine’s long-term plans to join the European Union. Moreover, Ukraine was continuing to undergo a division of spheres of influence between its individual lobby groups, and the bank felt it would be expedient to avoid being associated with any one of them.

The Ukrainian media’s approach to business coverage also differs from the Russian one. In addition to everything else, the bank was surprised to learn that the word “trust” itself carried a negative connotation in Ukraine: what are known as “financial pyramids” in Russia are referred to as “trusts” in the Ukraine. Because of this, the bank encountered serious difficulties when trying to register its office on its first attempt.

Taking existing bilateral inter-governmental relations into account, it was decided to position the bank as Central and Eastern Europe’s largest specialized investment bank, which it objectively was, according to a ranking composed by one of the profession’s most respected publications, The Banker. The inauguration event’s format was built on the principle of an expanding agenda and focused on European economic themes: the bank also acted as the organizer of the forum, which was called Ukraine – European Union: The Prospects of Economic Cooperation and the Country’s Integration into a United Europe’s Financial Markets.

The agency developed the entire topic agenda, prepared all of the business meeting’s analytical material and additional information material, oversaw hall arrangements, organized a system for how the parties would interact, created the program’s media components, and also assumed all of the required administrative functions. The forum’s topic agenda was designed to show that by strengthening its economic relations with Russia, Ukraine was in no way delaying the country’s integration with the European partnership. With the agency’s invitation, the forum was attended by such EU experts as John Bruton, the former European Council President and author of the Growth and Stability Pact (a plan for unifying EU nations’ financial systems and introducing a single European currency), and Yury Poluneyev, a member of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Board of Directors and the EBRD’s Executive Director for Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia.

The engagement of independent experts was also designed to minimize the risk of the client’s actions being associated with the interests of some political force, the opposition or the oligarchs. By engaging VIP experts about matters surrounding the European Union as a forum headliner, the project’s organizers were also able to win support for the forum from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, which acted as its co-organizer. Anatoly Tolstoukhov, a member of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and Vladimir Maistrishin, the head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine’s budget subcommittee, were also included on the list of forum speakers. In a number of interviews with the Ukrainian media conducted before the forum, the bank’s management emphasized the fact that their investment bank was international by the very nature of its business. The event itself turned into a momentous occasion in the republic’s economic life, drawing tremendous interest from the Ukrainian press. A special press conference was organized for the Ukrainian media the morning before the meeting, which was broadcast over the Internet (on-line). Material for the forum was prepared in both Ukrainian and English.

Taking the negative connotations of the word “trust” into account, a decision was reached to only use the Latin spelling of the bank’s name in Ukraine. In order to ensure the greatest number of bank contact with the target audience, thus laying the foundation for future deals, the meeting agenda created a productive dialogue environment that saw bank representatives and the guests meet again for an informal portion of the event – a gala dinner catered by Potel & Chabot.

More than 150 guests representing the country’s business elite attended the business meeting. Some 40 publications and news items appeared within the project’s frameworks in the regional and Kiev business newspapers, magazine, electronic media outlets, and news agencies. The event remained a dominant news item for the country’s business media, not only on the day of the forum, but also in the week that followed. Within a short timeframe, the agency was able to achieve a favorable environment for launching the bank office’s operations in the Ukraine, positioning the bank as a reliable, European-oriented organization that worked in the interests of Ukraine. The bank started being viewed as a serious partner that could help develop the Ukrainian economy.

At the moment, the bank’s work experience in the Ukraine includes such projects as the organization of the issue of Ukraine’s first Eurobond, a program for raising financing to modernize the stock and tracks of Ukraine’s railway system, and programs for raising export-import financing and creating financial corporate administration systems for the Nikolayev Aluminous Plant, Zaporozhye Aluminum Plant, Krivorozhstal, Sumkhimprom, Vinnitsakhimprom, Severodenetsk Azot, Gorlovsky Stirol, the Zaporozhye and South Ukrainian Nuclear Power plants, and other clients.