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Global Business Outlook Survey - Fourth Quarter, 2013

904 views · Published 11 December 2013 · 5:50 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business · 2013 · Education

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CFO SURVEY: AFFORDABLE CARE ACT COULD CURTAIL HIRING

DURHAM, N.C. -- A significant percentage of U.S. chief financial officers indicate that because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they will reduce employment growth at their firms and shift toward part-time workers. 

A majority of finance chiefs also believe the full Social Security retirement age should be raised to help close the budget shortfall.

Despite these issues, underlying economic conditions are expected to improve in 2014 and, except in Europe, corporate charitable giving remains strong

These are some of the findings from the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey, which concluded Dec. 5. The survey has been conducted for 71 consecutive quarters and spans the globe, making it the world's longest running and most comprehensive research on senior finance executives. Presented results are for U.S. firms unless otherwise noted.

Detailed results, including tabular summaries of the numbers in this release and results from previous surveys, are available at www.cfosurvey.org.

About the survey: This is the 71st consecutive quarter the Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey has been conducted. The survey concluded December 5, and generated responses from 1,016 CFOs, including 400 from the U.S., 245 from Asia, 141 from Europe, 191 from Latin America, and 39 from Africa. The survey of European CFOs was conducted jointly with TiasNimbas in the Netherlands. The survey of Latin America was conducted jointly with Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in Brazil. The Japanese survey was conducted jointly with Takashi Yamasaki at Kobe University and Kotaro Inoue at Tokyo Institute of Technology. This is the second quarter for the African survey, which was conducted jointly with SAICA in South Africa. Results in this release are for U.S. companies, unless otherwise noted. 

The Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook survey polls a wide range of companies (public and private, small and large, many industries, etc.), with the distribution of responding firm characteristics presented in online tables. The responses are representative of the population of CFOs that are surveyed. Confidence ranges are reported in the online top line and banner tables for most of the numeric variables. A typical confidence range is less than one percentage point (e.g., capital spending is expected to increase by 7.3 percent with a 95 percent confidence range of 6.7 percent to 7.8 percent, which is a 0.9 percent confidence interval). 

Among the industries represented in the survey are retail/wholesale, mining/construction, manufacturing, transportation/energy, communications/media, technology, service/consulting and banking/finance/insurance. The average growth rates are weighted by revenues or number of employees. For example, one $5 billion company affects an average as much as 10 $500-million firms would. Revenue-weighted mean growth rates are provided for earnings, revenues, capital spending, technology spending and prices of products. Employee-weighted mean growth rates are used for health care costs, productivity, number of employees and outsourced employment. The earnings, dividends, share repurchases and cash on balance sheet are for public companies only. Unless noted, all other numbers are for all companies, including private companies. 

CFO Publishing LLC, a portfolio company of Seguin Partners, is a business-to-business media brand focused on the information needs of senior finance executives. The business consists of CFO magazine, CFO.com, CFO Research, and CFO Conferences. CFO has long-standing relationships with more than a half-million financial executives.

Duke's Fuqua School of Business was founded in 1970. Fuqua's mission is to educate business leaders worldwide and to promote the advancement of business management through research. For more information, visit www.fuqua.duke.edu.

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