Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
22–23 October in Kyiv the XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum took place — the leading business event for C-level executives, organized for 24 years by the FAService team. Over two days more than 50 speakers across six sessions, covering 22 panel discussions, interviews, and case studies, discussed approaches to strategic planning for the 2027 year in the absence of usual predictable benchmarks.
The conference brought together over 700 chief financial officers, top managers, and representatives of Ukrainian and international businesses from various industries: from finance, IT, and energy to agribusiness, retail, pharmaceuticals, media, construction, as well as the public sector. The focus of the discussions was practical cases and concrete management decisions that proved effective.
The leitmotif of the forum was a new vision of business management: wartime realities demand speed and flexibility in decision-making above all. And today the CFO is the main driver of such decisions. The evolution of the finance function has turned the CFO into an architect of resilience who combines strategy, technology, and the real economy of operational decisions.
Despite all the risks, Ukrainian business does not stop: companies continue to invest, rebuild models, and seek growth points. How to plan the future when assets and infrastructure are under attack, capital remains expensive, and inputs change daily? How to protect liquidity, where to raise financing, and which benchmarks to embed in financial models? Experts devoted the most attention to these questions during the discussions.
“I have organized this forum for many years, and for me the most valuable thing is to see the people who make decisions and continue to develop Ukrainian business. Clearly, there is almost no certainty, but decisions must be made today. So we focused on preparing for the 2027 year, talked about strategies, efficiency, technologies and, most importantly, about tools that actually work,” said Ihor Solovykh, CEO of FAService.
The practical focus was maintained throughout all conference sessions: moderators and speakers shared real experience of business adaptation and measurable results of changes.
“Today it is important to talk not just about risks, but about solutions, because often the best opportunities arise from risks. The worst thing we can do now is not make decisions,” emphasized Pavlo Prytyko, Director of the Department for Work with Middle Corporate Clients at PUMB, moderator of the discussion “Business Under Pressure.”
Key takeaways from the forum
Despite differences in industries and business scale, speakers’ discussions boiled down to several common observations:
1. Decisions are more valuable than the plan.
Planning has finally transformed from creating a single document to continuously modeling scenarios. The speed of decision-making itself has become the main competitive advantage for business.
2. Business should strive for growth even now
Any operational risk ultimately hits liquidity. At the same time, company leaders emphasized: a complete freeze of investments and stopping development is more dangerous than wartime risks.
3. Resilience through decentralization.
Companies are moving to smaller and dispersed structures: from decentralized warehouse networks to delegating authority locally. Reconstruction of lost assets is carried out in minimally necessary steps due to the risk of repeat destruction.
4. Investments in energy independence are more a calculated decision than forced expenses.
Investments in resilience (from generators to own energy projects) are evaluated through scenario modeling and clear payback periods.
5. The main resource and guarantee of resilience is people.
As discussion participants noted, processes designed for stable times did not withstand the test, while teams held up. That is why businesses invest in employee safety and mental health — from arranging autonomous shelters and flexible remote work formats to systemic veteran support programs.
At the same time, speakers agreed: there is no single universal system for everyone, and each company must find its own balance of investment and operational decisions.
Financial model-2027: zero growth and flexibility
First Deputy Governor of the NBU Serhii Nikolaychuk reported that the regulator’s new macro forecast, which is being prepared for publication, will be worse than July’s: instead of the expected 1,7% this year and 3% 2027-year growth, the economy will be close to zero. According to him, inflation accelerated to 10% due to higher energy costs and attacks on production and energy facilities and warehouses, so the key rate was raised to 16%. His advice to business: have a base scenario but be ready to change plans and priorities quickly.
Andrii Dliahach, founder of Advanter Group, estimates growth for the 2027 year at 0,5%. According to Advanter, current business losses reach $7,7 billion, and the war continues in 69,5% of companies’ forecasts for the 2027 year. He emphasized the lack of financial resources and the need for long-term cheap lending and insurance for wartime risks. In response, the NBU cited data: lending to businesses in national currency is growing by more than 30% per year, the share of non-performing loans is 11,5% (the lowest since 2014), and the debt under the “5-7-9%” program exceeded 200 billion UAH. The regulator also allowed banks to consider property rights to future receivables as collateral.
Planning as a decision-making process
Experts agreed that a modern financial plan exists not for strict adherence but for understanding possible courses of action. At the same time, each company builds its own horizon of benchmarks. For example, British American Tobacco Ukraine completely abandoned annual planning in favor of two-week and monthly cycles focusing on liquidity and product availability. Preparing alternative scenarios proved effective in practice: after a missile strike on a BAT factory, within a month the company switched from production to imports thanks to a pre-prepared plan (signed contracts, supplied stocks at alternative factories, etc.). Danone uses a monthly rolling forecast for 18 months, calling speed of reaction the main advantage. FOKSTROT maintains a three-year vision but reviews models when sales deviate by more than 10%, while Metinvest Group records one base scenario with reserves, where a trigger for restructuring is critical external changes, such as port closures. Despite different approaches, financial leaders agree on the main point: making a decision in time with 80% of the information is far more effective than being late while waiting for the full picture.
Capital and investments: payback versus risks
Approaches to investing during wartime require strict prioritization and proactivity in working with liquidity. For example, VITAGRO Holding divides projects by payback periods (operational – two to three years, new – from five years), invests in processing (which already reduced the share of crop production in revenue from 80% to 50%) and in effective energy independence — from creating its own fuel division to the first export of biomethane in Ukraine. BGS Rail demonstrated a case of early restructuring: after identifying a risk of a cash gap next year, the company proactively initiated dialogue with creditors, providing clear calculations and a plan. McDonald’s in Ukraine, despite risks, opened 43 new outlets over the past four years. The company’s example proved: generation is three times more expensive than the grid, but downtime of facilities while maintaining salaries and rent costs much more. YASNO estimates payback of energy resilience projects at 2,5–3,5 years, urging that they be counted as full business decisions. The Dobrobut network doubled revenue and capitalization in five years, never stopping strategy funding for a single day. The essence of this capital approach was aptly described by Agromat CEO Stepan Slynchuk, stressing that a total refusal of investments and stopping development today creates far greater risks for a company than the investment decisions themselves.
Antifragility of business: from rebuilding to insurance realities
As the discussion moderator Iryna Levkivska, Group CFO of Rozetka-EVO, emphasized, business antifragility during the war is determined by the ability to deal with atypical challenges that require new ideas and unique solutions from financial leaders. The response to challenges and the blows suffered became new rules of operational resilience that companies shared:
– Minimalism in rebuilding and decentralization. Nova Poshta treats each loss as a separate investment project and rebuilds facilities only in a targeted, minimally necessary scope. Despite this, in 9 months this year the company opened over 6,5 thousand parcel lockers and 2,2 thousand branches, delivered 371 million shipments and paid 25% more in taxes compared to last year. VARUS also chose warehouse fragmentation — it raises operational costs but significantly reduces wartime risks.
– Acceleration of transformations. Media company Starlight Media demonstrates a case of forced accelerated evolution: strategic business-model changes planned for 7–10 years were implemented in 2–3 years, which allowed tripling the share of digital revenues.
– Limited insurance instruments. The focus of the discussion remains insufficient levels of compensation. For example, Biosphere Corporation recorded actual compensation of 10 million UAH against losses of $10 million. Existing state instruments cover buildings and equipment (up to 30 million UAH per company) but so far leave inventories outside the zone of protection.
Reserves first, then CAPEX: a hidden resource within the business
When a significant part of capital investment is directed to rebuilding and energy resilience, the key task for the CFO becomes finding internal efficiency. Speakers’ experience showed: before buying new equipment or expanding staff, the business must fully exhaust the potential of existing resources. For example, Kansai Helios Ukraine made this an inviolable principle. Based on deep data analysis, the company identified and eliminated downtime, waiting times and chaotic changes in production schedules, which allowed them to reduce lead time from 7,7 to 2,6 days, increase service level to 93% and save over $100 thousand in CAPEX. The Association of Companies “TAS” applied a similar approach to the finance function: by digitizing and reviewing the tax-process map, the company eliminated double data entry. This optimized operating costs and had a direct effect on cash flow — a total of 35 million UAH in savings over two years.
Financial monitoring: prepare in advance
Volodymyr Havlytskyi, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Bank Pivdennyi, urged businesses to treat financial monitoring like medical diagnostics rather than a law-enforcement system. In his view, banks increasingly analyze operations even before they are executed. So if documents and explanations are prepared in advance, the payment goes through without delays. Among the most common mistakes are unclear payment purposes, formal responses to inquiries, and silence. Correct payment purpose designation can remove 30–40% of inquiries, and advance notice of significant changes — from a new line of business to a large contract — allows the bank not to treat them as anomalies. “Preparation for banking procedures begins not when a request arrives, but when you structure the deals,” Volodymyr concluded.
Evolution of the CFO role
Discussion participants formulated new expectations of the CFO during wartime. First and foremost it is a strategic partnership position and a “voice of common sense”: for example, a professional financial discussion was the basis for a key initiative at Agromat this year. Businesses involve financiers in decisions at earlier stages, even before the first figures and calculations appear (YASNO), and CFOs themselves are advised to boldly go beyond the purely financial function (BAT). At the same time, the new reality expands the financial leader’s area of responsibility to human capital: Viktor Piddubnyi (Danone) suggested tracking team stress levels as an important management KPI. Many speakers noted that preserving mental health and focusing on people became the main difference in business preparation for this winter versus previous years.
Partners of the XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum
Digital innovation partner – Business Evolution
Official partner for import financing – Done
ERP and digital transformation partner – Innoware
Growth financing partner – Bank Pivdennyi
AI-driven IT ecosystem partner – SMART business
Financial partner – PUMB
Financial process optimization partner – EBS
Innovation and digital-transformation partner – IT Enterprise
Security partner – SHERIFF
White Collar Crime partner – ARZINGER
Strategic capital management partner – Advance Finance Alliance
Strategic partner – ODGERS
Digital business solutions partner – Vchasno
IT systems implementation partner – ABM Cloud
With the participation of ERP.UA
Coffee partner – Lavazza
Travel partner – SILPO VOYAGE
CFO Cocktail Party partner – Hennessy
Educational partner – ACCA
Kaizen partner – Kaizen Institute
Water partner – Morshynska
Global payment partner – Payoneer
CEO Leadership partner – CEO Club Ukraine
Main media partner – Starlight Media
Professional partner – CFO Club Ukraine
Business networking partner – Board
Official logistics partner – Bolt
Education partner – Institute of Entrepreneurship Psychology
FMCG partner – ASCANIA FMCG
IT industry partner – IT Ukraine Association
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Як український бізнес адаптується та будує фінансові моделі на 2027 рік: у Києві відбувся XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Delo.ua.
