How Ukrainian business is adapting and building financial models for 2027: the XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum took place in Kyiv

On 22–23 October, the XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum took place in Kyiv — the leading business event for C-level executives, which the FAService team has organised for 24 years. Over two days, more than 50 speakers in six sessions, covering 22 panel discussions, interviews and case studies, discussed approaches to strategic planning for 2027 in the absence of the usual predictable reference points.

The conference brought together more than 700 chief financial officers, top managers and representatives of Ukrainian and international business from various sectors: from finance, IT and energy to agribusiness, retail, pharmaceuticals, media, construction, as well as the public sector. The discussions focused on practical cases and specific management decisions that have proven effective.

The leitmotif of the forum was a new vision of business management: wartime realities demand, above all, speed and flexibility in decision-making. And it is the CFO today who is the main driver of such decisions. The evolution of the finance function has turned the chief financial officer into an architect of resilience, combining strategy, technology and the real economics of operational decisions.

Despite all the risks, Ukrainian business is not stopping: companies continue to invest, rebuild their models and look for growth points. How do you plan the future when assets and infrastructure come under attack, capital remains expensive and the inputs change daily? How do you protect liquidity, where do you raise financing, and what benchmarks do you build into financial models? These were the questions to which the experts paid the most attention during the discussions.

Ihor Solovykh, CEO of FAService: “I have organised this forum for many years, and what I value most is seeing the people who make decisions and keep developing Ukrainian business. Of course there is almost no certainty, but decisions have to be made today. So we focused on preparing for 2027, talked about strategies, efficiency, technology and, above all, about tools that really work.”

The practical focus was maintained throughout all the conference sessions: moderators and speakers shared real experience of adapting businesses and the measurable results of changes.

“Today it is important to talk not just about risks but about solutions, because the best opportunities often arise precisely from risks. The worst thing we can do now is not to make decisions,” stressed Pavlo Prytyko, Director of the Mid-Corporate Clients Department at PUMB and moderator of the “Business Under Pressure” discussion.

Key conclusions of the forum

Despite differences in sectors and business scale, the speakers’ discussions came down to a few common findings:

1. Decisions are more valuable than the plan. Planning has finally transformed from creating a single document into continuous modelling of options. The speed of decision-making itself has become the main competitive advantage of a business.
2. Business should strive for growth even now. Any operational risk ultimately comes down to liquidity. At the same time, company leaders stressed: a complete freeze on investment and a halt to development are more dangerous than wartime risks.
3. Towards resilience through decentralisation. Companies are moving to smaller and more dispersed structures: from a decentralised warehouse network to delegating authority “to the field”. Lost assets are being rebuilt in the minimum necessary steps because of the risk of repeated destruction.
4. Investment in energy independence is more a calculation than a forced expense. Investments in resilience (from generators to companies’ own energy projects) are assessed through scenario modelling and clear payback periods.
5. The main resource and guarantee of resilience is people. As the participants noted, processes designed for stable times did not withstand the test, whereas teams held firm. That is why businesses are investing in the safety and mental health of employees — from setting up autonomous shelters and flexible remote-work formats to systematic veteran support programmes.

At the same time, the speakers were unanimous: there is no single universal system for everyone, and each company has to find its own balance of investment and operational decisions.

Financial model 2027: zero growth and flexibility

First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Serhii Nikolaichuk said that the regulator’s new macro forecast, which is being prepared for publication, will be worse than the July one: instead of the expected 1.7% this year and 3% in 2027, economic growth will be close to zero. According to him, inflation accelerated to 10% because of more expensive energy and attacks on production and energy facilities and warehouses, which is why the key rate was raised to 16%. His advice to business: have a baseline scenario but be ready to change plans and priorities quickly.

Andrii Dligach, founder of Advanter Group, estimates 2027 growth at 0.5%. According to Advanter, current business losses have reached $7.7 billion, and the war continues in 69.5% of company forecasts for 2027. He stressed the shortage of financial resources and the need for long-term subsidised lending and war-risk insurance. In response, the NBU cited data: lending to business in the national currency is growing by more than 30% a year, the share of non-performing loans is 11.5% (the lowest since 2014), and debt under the “5-7-9%” programme has exceeded UAH 200 billion. The regulator also allowed banks to accept property rights to future revenue as collateral.

Planning as a decision-making process

The experts agreed that a modern financial plan exists not to be followed strictly but to understand possible scenarios of action. At the same time, each company builds its own horizon of reference points. For example, British American Tobacco Ukraine has completely abandoned annual planning in favour of two-week and monthly cycles focused on liquidity and product availability. Preparing alternative scenarios has proved effective in practice: after a missile strike on the factory, BAT switched from production to imports within a month thanks to a plan prepared in advance (signed contracts, secured stocks at alternative factories, etc.). Danone uses a monthly 18-month rolling forecast, calling speed of response the main advantage. FOXTROT keeps a three-year vision but revises its models when sales deviate by more than 10%, while Metinvest Group fixes one baseline scenario with reserves, where critical external changes, such as the closure of ports, become the trigger for a rebuild. Despite the differences in approach, financial leaders agree on the main point: making a decision on time with 80% of the information is far more effective than being late while waiting for the full picture.

Capital and investment: payback versus risk

Approaches to investing in wartime require strict prioritisation and proactivity in handling liquidity. For example, the VITAGRO holding divides projects by payback period (operational — two to three years, new — from five years), invests in processing (which has already cut the share of crop growing in income from 80% to 50%) and efficient energy independence — from creating its own fuel business to Ukraine’s first biomethane export. BGS Rail demonstrated a case of early restructuring: having identified the risk of a cash gap the following year, the company initiated a dialogue with creditors in advance, providing clear calculations and a plan. McDonald’s in Ukraine, despite the risks, has opened 43 new restaurants over the past four years. The company’s example showed that generation is three times more expensive than the grid, but downtime of sites while still paying salaries and rent costs far more. YASNO estimates the payback of energy-resilience projects at 2.5–3.5 years and urges treating them as full-fledged business decisions. The Dobrobut network doubled its revenue and capitalisation in five years without halting the financing of its strategy for a single day. The essence of this approach to capital was aptly described by Agromat CEO Stepan Slynchuk, who stressed that a complete refusal to invest and a halt to development create far greater risks for a company today than the investment decisions themselves.

Business antifragility: from rebuilding to insurance realities

As the discussion moderator Iryna Levkivska, Group CFO of Rozetka-EVO, stressed, business antifragility in wartime is determined by the ability to work with atypical challenges that demand new ideas and unique solutions from financial leaders. The answer to the challenges and the blows endured has been new rules of operational resilience, shared by the companies:

• Minimalism in rebuilding and decentralisation. Nova Poshta evaluates each loss as a separate investment project and rebuilds facilities only selectively and to the minimum necessary extent. Even so, in the first nine months of this year the company opened more than 6,500 parcel lockers and 2,200 branches, delivered 371 million shipments and paid 25% more in taxes than last year. VARUS also chose to break up its warehouses — this raises operating costs but significantly lowers wartime risks.
• Accelerating transformations. The media company Starlight Media demonstrates a case of forced accelerated evolution: strategic changes to the business model planned over 7–10 years were implemented in 2–3 years, which allowed the share of digital revenue to triple.
• Limited insurance instruments. The discussion remains focused on the insufficient level of compensation. For example, Biosphere Corporation recorded actual compensation of UAH 10 million against losses of $10 million. The existing state instruments cover buildings and equipment (up to UAH 30 million per company) but for now leave inventories outside the protection zone.

Reserves first, then CAPEX: the hidden resource inside the business

When a significant part of capital investment goes to rebuilding and energy resilience, the key task of the chief financial officer becomes finding internal efficiency. The speakers’ experience showed that before buying new equipment or expanding staff, a business must fully exhaust the potential of its existing resources. At Kansai Helios Ukraine, for example, this has been made an inviolable principle. Based on deep data analysis, the company identified and eliminated downtime, waiting and chaotic changes to production schedules, which cut lead time from 7.7 to 2.6 days, raised the service level to 93% and saved more than $100,000 in CAPEX. At the TAS Association of Companies, a similar approach was applied to the finance function: by digitising and reviewing the map of tax processes, the company eliminated double data entry. This optimised operating costs and had a direct effect on cash flow — UAH 35 million in total savings over two years.

Financial monitoring: prepare in advance

Volodymyr Havlytskyi, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Pivdennyi Bank, urged business to see financial monitoring as medical diagnostics rather than a law-enforcement system. According to him, banks increasingly analyse transactions even before they are carried out. So if documents and explanations are prepared in advance, the payment goes through without delay. Among the most common mistakes: an unclear payment purpose, formal replies to requests and silence. A correct payment purpose removes 30–40% of requests, and advance warning about significant changes, from a new line of business to a large contract, lets the bank avoid treating them as anomalous. “Preparation for banking procedures begins not when the request arrives, but when you structure your deals,” Volodymyr summed up.

The evolution of the CFO’s role

The discussion participants formulated new expectations of the chief financial officer in wartime. First of all, this is about a strategic partner position and the “voice of common sense”: for example, a professional financial discussion became the basis for a key initiative at Agromat this year. Businesses involve finance people in decisions at earlier stages, even before the first figures and calculations appear (YASNO), and CFOs themselves are advised to step boldly beyond the purely financial function (BAT). At the same time, the new reality extends the finance leader’s area of responsibility to human capital as well: Viktor Piddubnyi (Danone) proposed tracking the team’s stress level as an important management KPI. Many speakers noted that preserving mental health and focusing on people have become the main difference in how businesses are preparing for this winter compared with previous years.

Background

Partners of the XXIV Ukrainian CFO Forum

• Digital Innovation Partner — Business Evolution
• Official Importer Financing Partner — Done
• ERP and Digital Transformation Partner — Innoware
• Growth Financing Partner — Pivdennyi Bank
• AI-driven IT Ecosystem Partner — SMART business
• Financial Partner — PUMB
• Financial Process Optimisation 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
• Education 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

FAService is the leading organiser of business events in Ukraine. For more than 20 years the company has been creating professional platforms for top managers and business owners, promoting the exchange of practical experience, analysis of market trends and the development of shared strategic decisions.

More about the Ukrainian CFO Forum: https://cfo.ua/cfoforum/

Source: DEV.UA (dev.ua), https://dev.ua/news/u-kyievi-vidbuvsia-xxiv-ukrainian-cfo-forum-1793358804