Ukrainian companies keep losing positions in Deloitte’s annual ranking of 500 biggest companies in Central Europe. Its latest ranking, released earlier this week, mentioned only 29 Ukrainian enterprises and two banks.
In 2015, 32 Ukrainian companies and three banks were listed, while in 2014 there were 53 companies.
The leaders of the ranking remain unchanged since 2015. They are the Polish oil refiner and petrol retailer PKN Orlen, Hungarian multinational oil and gas company MOL and Škoda Auto from the Czech Republic.
Ukraine’s biggest companies
Metinvest, part of the empire of the richest Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov, used to be on the sixth place in 2015, but went descended to 13th position in this year’s ranking. The company declared a €6,108 million turnover in 2015, but finished the year with some €890,000 million in losses. The Deloitte report reads that “the unrest in Ukraine has contributed to Metinvest sliding down seven places in the ranking”.
State-owned oil and gas company Naftogaz of Ukraine went up from 17th to 15th position. In Its revenue totaled at €5,375 million in 2015, a 6.7 percent growth comparing to 2014.
Another state-owned energy company Energorynok lost 11 positions in the ranking and ranked as 23d, but remained the third biggest Ukrainian company according to the report, with revenues of €4,481 million.
Ukraine’s PrivatBank and Oschadbank made to the Top 50 Banks in Central Europe ranking, based on their assets in 2015. PrivatBank, which declared €10,484 million in assets in 2015, slided from the 19th position to 24th. State-owned Oschadbank, which assets are estimated at €6,067 million, ended up at 47th position, sliding down six positions comparing to 2015.
State-owned Ukreximbank (State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine), which used to be at 43d position in 2015 ranking, didn’t make it to the list in 2016.
This year’s newcomers of the list are the state railway network operator Ukrzaliznytsia, pharmaceutical distributor BaDM, state-owned Ukraine International Airlines, State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine.
While losing representation, Ukraine succeeded in another way. It appeared to have the biggest proportion of women on management boards in Central Europe: 28.3 percent of top managers in the companies listed in the ranking are women.
IT impact
Ukrainian energy holding DTEK and agricultural company Kernel made it to a separate list of companies that were impacted by digitalization.
DTEK implemented a set of single unifying programs for use across different enterprises within the company and launched digital control technologies such as enterprise resource planning software called SAP ERP.
Kernel, on its part, is introducing an intelligent IT platform for managing farming processes that can integrate and analyze huge arrays of information, provide recommendations for planning and monitoring the field works.
Beyond that, Kernel appeared to be one of the few companies who went up in the Top 500 companies ranking, gaining nine points and ending up at 78th position.
Bad year, good forecast
According to the Deloitte report, Ukraine was the only country in Central Europe whose economy declined in 2015 (down by 9.9 percent). The report cites the enduring geopolitical tension as the reason behind the decline.
Since hryvnia depreciated against euro, there was a discrepancy between the companies’ revenues growth in local currency (up by 25.9 per cent) and the decrease in euros (down by 17.4 per cent).
However, Deloitte concludes that 2016 should be a better year for Ukraine, with the expected GDP growth of 1.5 percent.
