The recovery may look shaky, but chief financial officers say their companies are starting to hire and they're starting to spend.
Half the financial executives in the latest CFO Quarterly Outlook Survey from FEI and Baruch College believe that the country is in the midst of a recovery and they're not so worried about inflation or oil prices.
CFOs' confidence in the global economy jumped more than five points and their optimism in their own companies saw a three point increase from the fourth quarter.
"U.S. CFOs remain particularly optimistic in their companies' expectations, reflecting projections in net earnings, optimism in the U.S. economy and small dips in unemployment rate," says John Elliott, Dean of Baruch's Zicklin School of Business.
The most encouraging nugget is that the majority of U.S. CFOs (62%) plan to hire in the next six months. Prospects aren't so bright in Europe, where with only a third of CFOs (35%) said they plan to add staff. But European CFOs weren't quite so upbeat in general. Read the full survey here.
On the spending side, 45% of the world's CFOs and other executives say they're likely to switch from hoarding cash to spending this year, according to the fifth annual American Express/CFO Research Global Business & Spending Monitor. That's a huge change from last year when 62% said they were stashing cash in case of emergency. The numbers are even better for U.S. respondents---nearly two-thirds are talking about using cash on M&A, And backing up the findings in the FEI/Baruch survey, 53% of respondents hope to raise headcount over the 12 months.
This story first appeared on WSJ.com