Just one in three CFOs have appetite for more risk |
Just over one in three (35%) of chief financial officers think now is a good time to take on greater risk, down from nearly half of CFOs (47%) in the first quarter, marking the second lowest level of risk appetite since Deloitte began measuring it in 2015.The low (26.92%) was hit in the second quarter of 2020 when COVID-19 concerns gripped companies early in the pandemic, according to a quarterly Deloitte survey. Steve Gallucci, Deloitte’s global and U.S. CFO Program leader, said in an interview that the pullback from risk is in line with the increasingly dour economic outlook held by many of the survey respondents. “The more variables we enter into the equation, [the more] CFOs tend to be a little more risk averse. This really speaks to the general concern about the economic situation, certainly geopolitically, certainly from an inflation perspective,” he said. Finance chiefs in technology, financial services, and manufacturing indicated they were the least inclined to take on more risk while those in the retail/wholesale, energy/resources, and services sectors were more open to it.