On the Edge - Driving Growth and Mitigating Risk Amid Extreme Volatility

For CEOs in the US and Europe, COVID-19 disruptions are mostly in the rearview mirror, but concern over the pandemic’s impacts remains strong among CEOs in China, where COVID-19 cases have skyrocketed with the easing of restrictions, and in Japan, where the lockdowns in China disrupted supply chains and a new wave of cases in late summer of 2022 had a negative impact on business activity in the re. [...] CEOs in the US and other parts of the world (except for Europe) do not list the war in Ukraine among the top five events likely to have a significant impact on their operations in 2023. [...] Considering its disruptive impact on the global economy, are businesses underestimating the impact on global growth, trade, energy, and supply chains of the war intensifying? When it comes to the impacts of the war in Ukraine, more than 80 percent of CEOs globally expect cyberattacks outside the war theater to intensify, while more than 65 percent believe economic sanctions will increase and globa. [...] Despite evidence showing many CEOs in the US and Europe desire a return to the office mandate, just 5 percent of CEOs in the US and 2 percent in Europe cite returning workers to the physical workplace as an HCM priority in 2023. [...] Supply chain CEOs globally cite supply chain disruptions as a top five high-impact issue for 2023, but it has fallen in intensity for CEOs in both the US and Europe since our January 2022 report, dropping from 3rd in 2022 to 5th in the US and 7th in Europe in 2023 amid signs of some 5 On the Edge www.conferenceboard.org easing as inventories return to prepandemic level.