The WSJ reports, "In a sign of its global ambitions, Alibaba Group Holding named Jim Wilkinson, a senior PepsiCo executive who also worked for the U.S. government, as its new head of international corporate communications.
Wilkinson is joining Alibaba at a time when global public relations and the company’s relationship with the U.S. is more important than ever. Alibaba last week filed paperwork to list in New York, in what could be one of the largest initial public offerings in history. In addition to more intense scrutiny from U.S. investors and financial regulators, Alibaba also is getting far more international media coverage.
Alibaba currently does the bulk of its business domestically in China but hopes to expand in the U.S., and faces legal and political challenges, it said its IPO filing. For example, its Taobao marketplace, an online consumer retail market in China, and Alibaba.com, its foreign supplier website, have in the past been on the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual list of “notorious markets” for counterfeit and pirated goods, though neither has been since 2011, according to the filing.
Prior to joining Alibaba, where he will start in the coming weeks, Wilkinson was executive vice president for communications at PepsiCo since 2012, where he oversaw global public relations. He had a number of roles in the George W. Bush administration, including senior adviser on foreign affairs to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He also served as a spokesman for Gen. Tommy Franks during the Iraq invasion. During the financial crisis, Wilkinson was chief of staff to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. (In the film “Too Big to Fail,” he was portrayed by the actor Topher Grace.)
Wilkinson first rose to national prominence as a key spokesman for the Republican Party, both during the 1994 takeover of the House and during the contested Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election. While working as a spokesman for former U.S. Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, he publicized Armey’s charge that former Vice President Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet".
