Yuri Zastavny has 9 years experience managing a the subsidiary of a large multinational in Ukraine. He joined Novartis Agro in 1998, to manage Ukrainian business of Novartis Agro out of debt crisis. After several years of debt collection and restructuring, the company started full scale operation on the market as a legal entity.

In 2001, after Novartis Agro and Zeneca merger and creation of Syngenta, Yuri became CFO of the merged entity. The focus was on restructuring several representative offices, joint ventures and legal entities and concentrating the business in one single structure.

He was appointed country head of Syngenta in 2004 and continued in this role till late 2007. Under his leadership, the turnover of the company grew from $25m to $75m, this included crop protection and seeds product lines. Yuri Zastavny was a member of Syngenta East Europe Leadership Team, that co-managed over 20 countries in Eastern Europe with a turnover of over $500m.

From 2008, Yuri serves on the board of 2 Ukrainian companies (top five developer – head of supervisory board and top five insurance company – member of supervisory board) and consults several agribusiness companies, both local and international, on business development, managing growth in developing market and strategy definition.

Yuri was educated in Lviv State University and Cambridge University (Masters of Economics), and he holds an International MBA degree from Nyenrode University, the Netherlands.