Gloom descends on US finance executives

America’s economy sunk to a four-year low amid mounting concern over high oil prices, waning consumer demand and inflation, according to a study. The findings, which are to be released on Friday, follow a spate of US economic data and corporate earnings reports in recent weeks that fuelled fears of a recession and damped hopes of an easing of the financial crisis.
Chief financial officers has also faded this year, and in the second quarter touched its lowest point since June 2004, a survey by Financial Executives International and Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business showed.
Least half of those surveyed believed that the price of crude oil would climb to at least $160 a barrel in six months, or about a third higher than where it traded Thursday.
Economists hold a bleaker outlook for the second half of this year than was the case even three months ago.”
However, the study also showed that more than two-thirds of the 200 CFOs surveyed remained optimistic about their own companies’ prospects. Some even planned to increase technology and capital spending in the next year.
The steadiness in CFOs’ outlook toward their own companies may reveal that they are adapting to the turmoil and taking appropriate actions within their organisations,” said John Elliott, dean of the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.