The quarterly Deloitte CFO Survey has found geopolitics remains the top concern for UK business leaders.
Key findings include:
- Sentiment among UK CFOs has risen for the third consecutive quarter and is well above its long-term average.
- Corporate risk appetite has risen, but CFOs maintain a defensive strategy stance with 56% rating reducing costs as a strong priority and 43% rating increasing cashflow as a strong priority.
Cyber-attacks specifically are the top concern for CFOs when it comes to the consequences of geopolitical developments, the report found, with more than half of UK CFOs expecting the geopolitical risks facing their business to increase over the next three years.
“Geopolitics has topped CFOs’ risk list for the seventh time in nine quarters,” the report notes. “Concerns about an escalation of the war in Ukraine, risks to regional stability and further disruption to Red Sea shipping posed by continued conflict in Gaza, and the impact of forthcoming elections, including in the US, on ongoing conflicts and global trade seem to be weighing on CFOs’ minds. With the UK economy having barely grown since early 2022, worries over poor productivity and competitiveness have risen.”
In encouraging news, the report finds that concerns around inflation and further rate rises have gone down.
Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/finance/articles/deloitte-cfo-survey.html
