Business As Usual Is Still a Long Way Off

Only 6% of the U.S. CFOs thought a return to normalcy would take six to 12 months, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ survey says

Ben Schott

14 May 2020, 10:32 AM IST

Business As Usual Is Still a Long Way Off

A demonstrator holds a sign that reads “No More Business As Usual” during a protest on the first day of the ExxonMobil Corp. trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building in New York, U.S. (Photographer: David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- On March 11 — the day the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic — 69% of chief financial officers predicted their companies would be back to “business as usual” in under a month, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of U.S. CFO and finance leader sentiment.

On the same day, only 6% thought a return to normalcy would take six to 12 months, and not a single CFO thought it would take longer than a year.

Almost two months later, on May 8, only 10% of CFOs said it would take their businesses less than a month to recover, and 7% predicted it would take more than a year. The rest of the field was divided between one to three months (32%), three to six months (31%) and six to 12 months (20%).

The retreating recovery horizon illustrated by PwC’s fortnightly polling suggests that the initial exuberance exhibited by the majority of CFOs in the early stages of the pandemic has been replaced by a slightly more sober, if still somewhat optimistic, timeline.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ben Schott is a Bloomberg Opinion visual columnist. He created the Schott’s Original Miscellany and Schott’s Almanac series, and writes for newspapers and magazines around the world.