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

Key findings
 

• CFOs are responding to the upcoming rise in employer NICs by cutting costs
• UK corporates are expected to cut capex, discretionary spending and hiring over the next 12 months, reporting the sharpest fall in hiring expectations since the pandemic
• Finance leaders expect the Bank of England to reduce interest rates to 4.0% by the end of 2025
• Business optimism has fallen but remains well above the lows seen in 2020 and 2022
• CFOs rate the UK as a more attractive destination for investment than ‘developed Europe’

“With cost control to the fore in the wake of the Budget, CFOs have trimmed expectations for corporate investment, discretionary spending and hiring in the next 12 months. But despite a fall in business confidence, we expect to see UK growth picking up over the summer on the back of easy fiscal policy and interest rate reductions, with GDP growth likely to exceed the 2024 outturn and the performance of the euro area. The UK ranks as a more attractive location for investment than the euro area, but overall, the US ranks by some margin as the most attractive destination for business investment highlighting the competitive challenge posed by a fast-growing US economy. 2025 seems likely to be a year of continued if modest UK growth. Looking ahead, a continued emphasis on policies to unlock the UK’s potential remain key to shifting the trajectory of activity.”

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.