Some 36% of respondents to Deloitte’s 67th quarterly survey of chief financial officers and group finance directors of large companies in the UK say that their businesses were facing high or very high levels of uncertainty.
This figure was the lowest recorded since the summer of 2021 when national lockdown restrictions were ending.
A net 17% are more positive about the financial prospects of their business than they were three months ago.
“We are definitely seeing renewed optimism from large corporate clients,” says Scott Barton, managing director and head of corporate coverage at Lloyds Bank Corporate & Institutional Banking. “Our Q1 business barometer saw respondents exhibiting the strongest confidence levels in over eight years.”
Jackie Bowie, managing partner and head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Chatham Financial, observes that the economic outlook is weak for Europe as a whole, but the inflation story is dissipating, and the expectation is that there could be some interest rate cuts on the horizon – so there is a slightly better environment for corporates to be operating in.
Colin
