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About the study
Central Europe CFO Survey 2019
Outlook optimistic – but is confidence past its peak?
This annual questionnaire tracks the latest thinking and actions of CFOs representing the largest and most influential companies in the Central Europe region. It explores top-tier CFO issues across four areas:
• Business environment
• Company priorities and expectations
• Finance priorities
• Deployment of Artificial Intelligence
The group of nearly 700 CFOs that shared their opinions with us is a great audience to discuss interesting topics and to demonstrate our expertise. Our respondents are based in 17 Central European countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The survey was conducted between September and November 2018.
Message from the CFO Program Leader:
This year, expectations around the future outlook for the region’s businesses and economies are largely in line with those from 2018, but with a slight decrease in optimism. This in turn has driven a decline in the CFO Confidence Index, from 23% in 2018 to 16% now. While opinions overall remain positive, we wonder if this is an early indication that sentiment is set to change. However, we must not forget that since 2016 we have watched as CFO confidence grew stronger and stronger. In addition, this year’s findings are still ahead in confidence terms of those from 2016 and 2017. So perhaps we should be looking at 2018 as an exceptional year when the region’s CFOs were in a particularly buoyant mood. This is a question that will be answered by the 11th edition of the survey report, when it is published in 2020.
