Global CEO Survey – Navigating The Rising Tide Of Uncertainty – PwC

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The PwC’s 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey Report studies the causes of uncertainty and the various forms of it, as well as what CEOs all over the world are doing to manage it. The survey gathered data from more than 1,500 CEOs in over 80 territories.

Some main findings from this survey include:

  • Overall, most CEOs were quite pessimistic about the outlook of the global economy with more than half of them think that global economic growth will decline, only 22% think it will improve and 24% of them think it will stay the same.
  • CEOs in North America are the most pessimistic about economic growth with only 10% of them believe growth will improve in the next 12 months, followed by Western Europe and the Middle East. Asia-Pacific is the region where CEOs are most optimistic with 35% of them believe economic growth will improve in the next year.
  • Affected by their pessimism about the growth of the economy, most CEOs don’t have high confidence with their revenue growth in the next 12 months or three years either. Due to this, it’s projected that global GDP growth will likely to decline as well over the next 12 months.
  • When asked about their top threats for 2020, Over-regulation, Trade conflicts and uncertain economic growth were ranked at the top of the list, while same time last year, trade conflicts and uncertain economic growth were only considered as threats to CEOs by a few of them.
  • Globally, uncertain economic growth remain to be on the top ten threats to CEOs.
  • Due to the trade conflicts, it seems that most CEOs in China have decided to shift their production to other countries while US CEOs don’t think the same. Because of this, Australia now replaces the USA to become the most important growth prospect for China in the next 12 months. However, globally, the US is still the most promising growth prospect for CEOs from other countries, followed by China and Germany.
  • When asked to project the future, most CEOs agrees that private sector will be forced to regulate content on the internet, governments will break up dominant technology organisations as well as enforcing compensation for individual personal data collecting.

Full report here.