On October 16, during a dedicated session at FBK's ‘Finance. Taxes. Investments’ conference, experts shared insights on how companies can maintain resilience amid high uncertainty and sanctions pressure.
Featured speakers:
- Grigory Minaev, Associate Partner, Advisory and Financial Analysis Services at FBK, CPA
- Roman Kenigsberg, Head of Internal Audit and Risk Management Services at FBK, PhD in Economics
- Nikolay Isaev, Director, FBK Legal
8 (not-so-) obvious signs that a business is losing control:
- Standard operations stall without manual intervention. Processes do not run autonomously, and employees are afraid to make independent decisions.
- The system relies on ‘hype’ and heroics. Talk about the work replaces the actual work, and the management distance becomes too wide.
- Financial results look ‘suspiciously perfect’, or expense growth consistently outpaces revenue growth.
- The tax burden deviates anomalously from industry averages. The effective income tax rate differs significantly from the statutory rate.
- HR and contractual signals. Salaries fall below the regional industry average, there is a widespread involvement of self-employed contractors and inconsistencies in source documents.
- An overly complex group structure. A large number of entities and a high volume of intra-group transactions without a clear economic purpose.
- Weak internal control. Absence of counterparty due diligence policies, failure to apply available tax incentives, and insufficient accounting automation.
- Systematic claims from tax authorities. Regular requests (primarily regarding identified reporting discrepancies), account freezes, and recurring, albeit small, penalties and fines.
6 steps to rebuild your operations
1. Start with a stop-list
Drop processes and projects that do not bring real value. Focus resources solely on your most profitable clients and products; shut down or freeze the rest. Reduce management distance and redistribute teams—the decision-making path must become shorter, not longer. Most importantly, do not mistake rebuilding for ordinary financial optimisation carried out by the ‘old team’ that still thinks in the old categories. The result of genuine rebuilding is revenue and profit growth, not just cost reduction.
2. Take control of liquidity
Introduce a short planning horizon, tighten cash flow controls, and shorten the decision-making path by redistributing authority within teams. Pay attention to alarming financial markers: expense growth consistently outpacing revenue growth, reported losses for more than two consecutive years, and a rising share of overdue receivables from counterparties. In an environment where corporate debt has reached 40% of GDP and the key rate remains high, liquidity is the primary asset for survival.
3. Benchmark against industry averages
Conduct a comparative analysis of your tax burden, VAT deduction share, and compensation levels. Pay close attention to your effective income tax rate. Look into—and, most importantly, document—the reasons for any deviations, as this is your first line of defence during tax audits.
4. Check your counterparties
Review the relevance of internal policies and guidelines (especially those regarding counterparty due diligence and transaction approvals) and conduct an internal audit of their practical application. Request and obtain documents proving that counterparties have the actual resources (staff, technical, financial) to fulfil contracts, rather than just standard charter and registration documents.
5. Consult an external advisor
An external consultant can help analyse your company's operations, identify and assess its risks, and offer practical solutions to mitigate them from an independent perspective.
6. Implement a business continuity plan (BCP)
This is not just a box-ticking document, but an economically sound, drill-tested crisis response system. Resilience is not a single tool, but four key investments: in people and their skills, in diversifying suppliers and channels, in technology and risk monitoring automation, and in building reserves and ensuring access to liquidity.
A step-by-step algorithm for creating a BCP in 6 steps (from setting priorities to evaluating effectiveness) can be viewed here.
