Ranking shows who are the most important business leaders in Uruguay

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Merco ranking of Uruguay’s leading companies includes the number one, which it had not had until 2021. Nicolás Jodal, CEO of technology and software company Genexus, topped the list.

The following three places are held by Carlos Alberto Lecueder, the owner of Montevideo Shopping, and Orlando Dovat of Zonamérica, one of the country’s leading free trade zones.

The ranking considers 14 variables to determine the positions, grouped into seven central values. These are strategic vision and management capacity, commercial vision, talent, ethical behavior, CSR, international charisma, how innovative the leader is, and how well they can communicate.

This is the third year that Uruguay has made the rankings; the pandemic may have contributed to the trio currently at the top of the list gaining prominence.

Only Nicolás Jodal played a crucial role in addressing Uruguay’s health emergency, as Genexus developed the coronavirus app that the government uses to register vaccines and certificates, as well as the system that assigns dates for vaccine doses.

The other rankings are followed by Rafael Hermida of Mercado Libre in fourth place, Verónica Raffo of Ferrere Abogados in fifth, Teresa Cometto of Unilever in sixth, Enrique Baliño of Xn Partners in seventh, Christopher Jones of Ta-Ta Supermarkets in eighth, Nicolás Herrera of Guyer&Regules in ninth and Ariel Burschtin of PedidosYa in tenth.

Compared to last year, the ranking has changed in that there are now two women in the top 10. In 2021, Verónica Raffo occupied seventh place, and the second woman was Patricia Marques of PwC, who appeared only in sixteenth place.

Cometto climbed from nineteenth to sixth place this year and Soledad Delfante (HR Manager at Mercado Libre) from twentieth to twelfth. There are 19 women among the 100 chosen. In 2020, there were 18 women.

Another significant change was the inclusion in the list of Sergio Fogel, one of the founders of the payment processing company dLocal (which became the first Uruguayan unicorn).

He reached 22nd place in a situation where he was recently included in the Forbes list of billionaires of the world. The young president of dLocal, Jacobo Singer, is also in 52nd place in this company.