Francis Malige has led the EBRD's Financial Institutions Business Group since 2018, overseeing investments in banks, insurance companies and non-bank financial institutions across 36 economies on three continents. He has led the EBRD's response through the financial sector to both the COVID crisis and the war on Ukraine.
He joined the EBRD in 2010 as a Director of Financial Institutions. From 2014 to 2018 he headed the Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region, and in Ukraine steered state-owned enterprise reform, banking sector transformation and the Ukraine Reforms Architecture, later serving on Privatbank's board following its nationalisation.
Before the EBRD, he was Managing Director for Corporate Development at BNP Paribas, and earlier worked at Arthur Andersen and McKinsey & Company.
The war has sharply increased risks and shortened planning horizons. But putting investment entirely on hold also comes at a price: the loss of markets, production capacity, and competitive positions.
Nevertheless, new projects continue to be launched in Ukraine, international financial institutions continue to finance the private sector, and investors are committing capital to businesses now.
What makes an investment viable today, how should wartime risks be assessed, and which instruments can make them acceptable to private capital? We will discuss this at KIEF 2026 during the panel discussion "Investment Doesn't Wait for Peace".