Ruben Faust – Interim CFO / VP Finance | Germany-wide
Senior Finance Exec (incl. advisory board mandate) with over 30 years of experience – including almost 18 years at The Coca-Cola Company and since 2011 as Interim CFO and VP Finance. Focus areas: building and scaling finance functions, financing rounds, ERP and CRM implementations, M&A and business partnering at eye level with CEOs, shareholders and investors.
Career
Business Administration (Dipl.-Kfm.)
Banking · Auditing
1991 – 1993
Auditor & IT-Systems Auditor
1993 – 2010
CFO Scandinavia · CFO France · ERP Implementation Manager · Commercial Finance Manager & M&A · Manager Plant Controlling
2011 – heute
Interim CFO
&
VP Finance
Career in detail
FAUSTSOLUTIONS, Bonn: Interim CFO / VP Finance
More than 15 documented mandates in start-ups, scale-ups and high-growth SMEs with €4m to €100m revenue, PE-, VC- and owner-led. Among them 30 months at vialytics (finance function from zero to Series B level, ARR from €3m to €15m), 36 months at Fairtrade International (heading finance through to legal, global cloud ERP), the ERP migration and restructuring input at the automotive OEM and the handover to the permanent CFO at KRÜSS. In total: six financing rounds with more than €100m, three M&A processes with more than €150m business value, six ERP and CRM systems. BVMID TOP INTERIM 2024, 2025 and 2026. All mandates under Results.
Bonsucro, London: supervisory board member and chair of the Finance & Risk Committee (pro bono)
Six years on the supervisory board of the global sustainability NGO for sugarcane. Development of the five-year strategic plan; over that period available funds rose by 30 per cent and headcount doubled. Governance review and selection of new board members. Profile: Bonsucro.
The Coca-Cola Company: CFO Scandinavia Division
Full P&L responsibility for the Scandinavian division. Accountable for volume, EBIT, working capital and cash flow targets, strategic planning, budgeting and brand management.
The Coca-Cola Company: CFO France Division
Full P&L responsibility for the French division. M&A including valuation, due diligence and post-merger integration, plus strategic procurement and steering of brand communication. My fluent French dates from this period.
The Coca-Cola Company, Essen and Berlin: Manager Commercial Finance & M&A
Profitability analyses, brand and customer controlling, business cases and financial modelling, restructuring projects. The tools I still use today to build profitability analyses at customer and project level.
The Coca-Cola Company, Essen and Berlin: ERP System Implementation Manager
Led several SAP implementations in the FI, CO, MM and SD modules. The foundation for the six ERP and CRM implementations as interim CFO, see ERP implementation in a scale-up.
The Coca-Cola Company, Cologne: Manager Controlling
Head of controlling at the Cologne production site: planning, budgeting, forecasting and investment controlling.
Ernst & Young, Düsseldorf: Auditor & IT Systems Auditor
Annual audits across various industries and IT audits. The auditor's perspective still shapes how I build closes and data rooms: so that they withstand an audit and a due diligence.
University of Cologne: Diplom-Kaufmann (business administration)
Majors in banking, accounting and auditing, and marketing.
Qualifications & publication
Accounting under HGB, IFRS and US GAAP; compliance and risk management under SOX; project and IT methods ITIL, PRINCE2 and agile approaches. Co-author of the book “Wirtschaftswende jetzt! – So bringen wir Deutschland wieder auf Wachstumskurs” (United Interim Economic Report 2025; edited by Dr. Harald Schönfeld, published by United Interim, 2025; ISBN 978-3-98674-149-5 – entry in the German National Library, press release) and author of expert articles at DDIM and United Interim, see Thought Leadership. Member of the DDIM working group Start-up & Scale-up. The full CV as PDF: English · German.
How I work with AI tools
Since July 2026 I have used AI tools in mandates, always starting with the data base. Two working principles apply without exception. First: before delivery, a second, separate AI system reviews the work critically, without knowledge of how it was produced. It is no auditor and replaces none. It finds what my eye no longer sees after four weeks.
Second: every figure visibly carries how hard it is: documented, arithmetically confirmed, as reported, assumption, proposal, decided, open. The reader of a report sees for each figure what it rests on. What the machine did and what was financial judgement is stated with every result, without percentages, because that cannot be quantified seriously.
Two cases from 2026: at PeriGuard, an auction of around 240 lots, open for ten months, was settled by mutual agreement, documented with chronology and pitfalls. At a group subsidiary with EUR 40m revenue, 11 unlinked files became one workbook, a prototype in one day.
Common to both cases: the deliverable is documentation that removes the dependency on one person. I process client data only on a company platform with a data processing agreement, EU hosting and training use excluded by contract. The service as a whole: AI automation in finance; the position behind it in the guide AI in finance.