site.btaManager of the Year 2023 Award Ceremony to Take Place in Sofia on November 4

There are ten contestants for the Manager of the Year Award 2024. The awards in the 17th edition of the competition for senior management achievements in Bulgaria will be presented at the Sofia Opera and Ballet on November 4.

The competition is organized by the Manager magazine. BTA is a media partner of the event.

The finalists in the competition were presented at a news conference here on Wednesday. Manager Media Group head Denitsa Dimitrova said that to awarded are the leaders who create, apply, and strengthen good governance practices that include high ethical standards and public responsibility.

In all these 17 years, the competition's mission has been to continue telling the stories of successful leaders and putting them in the spotlight. "In recent years, the business environment in the country has become accustomed to working in conditions of constant uncertainty, changes, innovations and crises, and in such a difficult environment, achievements are even more valuable because that is how new approaches are born and winning leadership qualities come to the fore," Dimitrova said. She pointed out that nearly 100 companies took part in the nominations for this year's competition.

In the Manager of the Year category, 38 senior business managers submitted documents in the first stage of the competition. Ten made it to the finals following a two-round selection based on criteria developed for the competition by Deloitte Bulgaria.

The finalists are: Management Financial Group CEO Antonia Sabeva; Convenience AD founder and CEO Ivan Alexandrov; Robert Bosch CEO and representative of Bosch Bulgaria Konstantin Konov; Centillion Ltd. General Manager Nikolay Kirov; Groupama Bulgaria CEO Celine Bolard; Dreamix CEO Stoyan Mitov; Ingram Micro Global Business Services Managing Director Tony McMurray; pCloud CEO Tunio Zafer; SOF Connect CEO Jesus Caballero;  and Smart Organic owner and CEO Yani Dragov.

Silvya Peneva, country managing partner at Deloitte Bulgaria, presented details about the methodology for assessing the candidates. She presented statistics on the contestants in the Manager of the Year category, according to which this year the most widely represented sector is Information Technology (8 contestants), followed by Financial Services (4), Trade and Fast-moving Consumer Goods (3), Construction and Manufacturing (2), and Aviation, Logistics, and Trade in Raw Materials (one contestant each)

The companies of the contestants report a rise in revenue of 14.3% for 2023 on an annual basis. In 2022, the growth was 13.5% on average, Peneva explained. According to the data, the participating companies' operating profit was 10.2% on average last year.

Those who made it into the second stage of the competition had a total revenue of BGN 4.6 billion and a profit of BGN 571 million for 2023. The number of new employees grew slightly last year, totalling around 18,000 people in 2023 and 2022.

The finalists' companies had a total revenue of BGN 1.2 billion and a profit of BGN 277 million in 2023. They employed around 5,000 people during the period under observation, which is a slight decrease.

Also presented at Wednesday's news conference were the finalists in two out of four additional categories, which the organizers introduced in 2022.