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CFO 2025

CFO of the Year

CFO of the Year is a competition about all Financial directors. It is organized for the ninth consecutive year and aims at distinguishing the financial leaders’ contribution to the CFO profession, promoting the best practices in the field and encouraging further development in the sector.

The competition provides an excellent opportunity for financial professionals to gain recognition of their efforts over the years and to recognize companies as professional organizations that promote good practices and develop the business environment in Bulgaria.

We invite any Finance manager who is willing to share his/her successful work practices, tell how he/she overcame difficulties, how he/she manages and unites his/her team and how he/she helps the company make important and strategic decisions, to join the contest.

CFO of the Year Award in 3 steps

1. Who can apply?

Nominees must be a Chief Financial Officer or equivalent with either a public or private organization.

2. How to apply?

The CFO’s can either self-nominate themselves or be nominated by their team or company management board representatives.

3. Why apply for a CFO award?

CFO of the Year is a great opportunity for the CFOs, their team and company to receive well-deserved and prestigious recognition for the many accomplishments of the past few years.

Application process

The applicants must meet the following criteria:

Nominees must be a Chief Financial Officer or equivalent with either a public or private organization.
Nominees have been in their current position for at least one year.
Nominations must be approved and validated by the nominee’s company Chief Executive Officer. The validation is done by filling in the validator’s details in the nomination form. By doing so, the validator approves the nomination.
Candidates are not employed by, or related to, any of the organizations that organize, partner or sponsor the CFO of the Year competition.
Judges, and individuals related to them, are not eligible to apply for the CFO of the Year awards.

Nomination process

Each CFO can submit his/her own application or be nominated by his/her team, colleagues or management of the respective company. Nominators may nominate more than one person.

Select one or more categories in which you wish to apply and describe your achievements in the nomination form. Participating in more than one category also gives you a greater chance of a prize. Each candidate can only receive an award in one category.

Nomination form

For more information about the application process, contact us at CFO@bg.ey.com

CFO of the Year categories

Nominees may submit their nominations in either one or several of the following categories:

In the last years the role of the CFO has been rapidly expanding to not only reporting numbers, but to truly becoming a trusted business advisor to management and board. CFOs have been actively stepping outside the finance function looking for the principles and capabilities to become real business partners in the organizations. Senior Finance professionals have been embracing technology and data to transform their departments and be able to provide strategic insight and enable change.
For CFOs, digital disruption offers the opportunity for new business models and revenue streams. However, it also makes the organization vulnerable to competition from new players and agile incumbents, and creates exposure to new risk. This presents an important opportunity for CFOs to step in and transform the Finance organizations by embracing a digital business model and turning the promise of data analytics into measurable performance gains.
Growing expectations from CFOs directly refer to the growing need of a powerful Finance team in every organization. To deal with the challenges of changing reality, CFOs need to make every effort to not only recruit the best talent and build the required capacities needed for the Finance function of the future. CFOs need to create an environment in which all the team members feel safe to learn, are encouraged to develop and inspired to bring value to the company and for themselves.
Planning and budgeting can help a business predict profitability, forecast income and expenditures, formulate plans and strategies, provide a model for performance and reach financial success. An improved planning and budgeting process leads to a better company and demonstrates financial leadership.
Financial control may be construed as the analysis of a company's actual results, approached from different perspectives at different times, compared to its objectives and business plans. These analyses require control and adjustment processes to ensure that business plans are being followed and that they can be amended in the event of anomalies, irregularities or unforeseen changes.

Corporate reporting underpins companies’ reputations and builds market confidence in the actions of company leaders. Reporting plays a central role in rebuilding trust in companies by providing clear insight into organizations’ financial and nonfinancial performance.
The CFO role in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups could be a real challenge. SME management needs a fact-based financial perspective to support their decision making. Yet the finance function in such companies often struggles in providing strategic insight and analytics to top management. CFOs are often over-burdened by routine tasks and daily problem-solving, struggling with limited resources.
Sustainable development has been a key theme for business for years, but it is currently becoming almost mandatory due to its incorporation into various regulations. To manage sustainably means to think long-term and with consideration for the environment and the people around you. The topic often enters the agenda of companies through the financial directors, who directly see the benefits and advantages of sustainability in the organization's processes. We are creating this new category not just to follow the current modern trend, but to distinguish managers who truly manage to use ESG requirements to support the success of their company.

Judging panel

ey-cfoy-2025-jury

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.