The quarterly Deloitte CFO Survey has been gauging sentiment and balance-sheet strategies among the UK’s largest businesses since 2007.

Key findings
 

• Sentiment among UK CFOs has edged lower this quarter, but is running at above average levels
• CFOs continue to see geopolitical developments as posing the greatest risk to their business, while concern about the risk of a US ‘hard landing’ has increased
• CFOs expect to raise spending on digital technology and assets such as software, IT and AI, both over the next 12 months and over a five-year time frame
• Finance leaders remain optimistic about AI’s ability to drive improvements in business performance
   

"Despite concerns about geopolitics and the possibility of a US hard landing, business optimism is continuing to run at above-average levels. Unlike the period following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – when CFOs’ worries about energy supply and prices spiked in tandem with geopolitical concerns – finance leaders today are relatively sanguine about the risks around energy, in part, perhaps because of the decline in the oil price between July and late September."

Ian Stewart, Chief Economist at Deloitte

Download the report
 

Download this quarter’s report here.

Explore the data
 

Download the PDF to access all the historical data series from the Deloitte CFO Survey. Data from the CFO Survey is also hosted on Thomson Reuters Datastream, Bloomberg, Factset and Macrobond. Please feel free to use any of the data series in your documents or presentations.

Email Tom Simmons to receive a copy of our spreadsheet containing our CFO Survey data.