PwC Global’s Chairman, Bob Moritz, launched the findings of PwC’s 20th Global CEO Survey on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The survey intends to both stimulate and inform businesses about the challenges faced today, through revealing the thoughts of some 1,400 CEOs and business leaders from around the world.
The data can be explored online, with the questions categorised into two sections, Growth and Competition and Globalisation and Tech. It can also be filtered into region, country and industry.
The survey findings reveal that in the UK, CEOs are extremely concerned with over-regulation, the future of the Eurozone, uncertain economic growth and the exchange rate volatility.
On the other hand, the are least concerned with access to affordable capital and unemployment. These results are reflected worldwide, with over-regulation being the main concern alongside uncertain economic growth.
Worldwide, however, the future of the Eurozone does not score as high as it does for UK-based CEOs.
In terms of what CEOs view as potential business threats to the growth of their organisations, UK-based respondents were concerned about availability of key skills, cyber threats and changing consumer behaviour.
Amongst availability of key skills, UK-based CEOs found it very difficult to recruit people with particular characteristics, with leadership scoring the highest in terms of difficulty. Creativity and Innovation came in second, with emotional intelligence also scoring surprisingly high.
The survey also explored how CEOs perceived globalisation as impacting particular areas related to business. Findings indicate that while globalisation is viewed as enabling connectivity, it equally has not closed the economic gap between the rich and the poor.
For this year, however, there seems to be a much more positive view on economic growth for the next 12 months, with the majority responding that growth will stay the same, or even grow, rather than decline.
