In the past half year, chief financial officers in Finland have grown more cautious. That’s one key conclusion from the latest Deloitte/SEB CFO Survey in Finland.
The survey combines perspectives from CFOs within large and midsized companies in Finland with viewpoints from SEB’s Nordic Outlook, the SEB research team’s flagship report on key forecasts and global economic trends.
“After our previous survey in the spring we experienced some dramatic changes in the pan-European geopolitical balance of power that has also had a significant impact on the ability to seek growth from Russia due to the tightened trade sanctions. This has also impacted the results of our current survey. However, the business conditions are not all as bleak as most readers might expect,” states the report.
The report, published twice a year, shows that positively developed business optimism from the past year and a half has dropped to levels of early 2013 in the fall 2014. There seems to be no end to news related to job reductions in Finland, even though the majority of companies (63 per cent) predict that they can increase their operational cash flow in the next 12 months.
On the upside, CFOs in Finland are experiencing tolerable risks. This might be due to the eased lending attitudes, ability to cope with the geopolitical crisis, and the defensive strategies CFOs are employing.