Green Funding and Company Value Drivers. Results of the CFO Russia Summit

Over two hundred financial managers of large Russian and International companies attended the Summit of Financial Directors of Russia - the XV annual event aimed at sharing the experience of the heads of financial departments. The event took place on October 30-31, 2018.

The summit program consisted of three thematic blocks: strategy, operational efficiency and practical solutions. In addition to the obvious interest of financiers in the analysis of macroeconomic trends and the competition of speakers such as 'whose analysis isn't so gloomy as others', several lines of discussion were surprised and memorable.

At first, the increased attention of financiers to the issues of communications in production processes with physical and financial solutions, the possibilities of combining the efforts of financiers and production staff – operational managers.

Secondly, attention was attracted by the discussion of “green financing” and the real experience of its organization in Russia. It’s the interesting case which was presented by CFO Polymetal – Eugenia Onuschenko. Very important points were mentioned in the financial directors’ speeches of closed; these CFOs shared their experiences on ways of increasing the value of business and the practice of adjusting KPIs and remunerating of top managers for such responsibilities. Interestingly, these presentations came not from public companies, it contradicts the Russian stereotype ‘if only a company was public it thought about increasing the value of a business’.

The team of experts from the School of Finance, which belongs to the HSE Department of Economic Sciences, took an active part in the summit. Of great interest was our discussion on non-financial reporting of business, where we exchanged views on the relevance of such data and, most importantly, on the format of data that would be aimed at linking non-financial information with the process of creating specific financial results.

The Head of the School, Irina Ivashkovskaya, acted as a moderator of the session on effective risk management, and also, together with Pavel Lvututin, Deputy Head of the Control Department of PJSC Unipro, presented the report “Company Value Drivers” at the round table.