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Dun & Bradstreet Global Business Optimism Insights Report Shows Quarterly Increase
Improving market dynamics have provided relief, indicating confidence in both domestic and global economic conditions
LONDON, Oct. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE:DNB), a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, today released its Q4 2024 Global Business Optimism Insights report. The report, fielded in Q3 2024, found a 7% increase in business optimism quarter-over-quarter, driven by gradual easing of inflation rates and favorable borrowing conditions.
Nearly four in five businesses are expressing increased optimism in domestic and export orders, capital expenditures and financial risk due to a combination of easing financial pressures, shifts in monetary policies, robust regulatory frameworks and higher participation in sustainability initiatives.
U.S. businesses recorded a nearly 9% rise in optimism, aided by falling inflation and expectations of further rate cuts. Similarly, business optimism in the U.K. and Spain showed notable recoveries as their respective central banks initiated monetary easing, rising by 13% and 9%, respectively. Emerging economies, such as Argentina and India, saw jumps in optimism levels due to declining inflation and increased domestic demand respectively.
“While overall global business optimism has increased and inflation has abated, it’s important to recognise that geopolitics contribute to economic uncertainty,” said Neeraj Sahai, President of Dun & Bradstreet International. “Industry-specific regulatory risks and more stringent data requirements have emerged as the top concerns among a third of respondents. To mitigate these risks, businesses are considering diversifying their supply chains and markets to manage regulatory risk.”
Key findings from the Q4 report’s five indices include:
- The Global Business Optimism Index increased by 7.3% over Q3 2024. This is a significant increase with 75% of businesses, especially smaller businesses, expressing confidence in sales and domestic and export orders ahead of the holiday season. The real estate (12.5%) and utilities (10.4%) sectors saw the highest jumps in optimism levels.
- The Global Supply Chain Continuity Index improved 6.8%, stemming from businesses reducing burdens on their supply chains by adopting nearshoring, using alternative and less-congestive routes, and relying on domestic supplies. One in four businesses in the U.S., as well as Switzerland and Spain, are considering diversifying supply chains and markets as their preferred strategy to manage their regulatory risk.
- The Global Business Financial Confidence Index increased 6.3% due to expectations of improved financial conditions and reduced borrowing costs as many economies have started to cut interest rates. Confidence in the U.S. and South Korea notably improved by 5.2% and 11.2%, respectively, on indications of their central banks pivoting towards looser monetary policies.
- The Global Business Investment Confidence Index improved 3.6%, showcasing optimism in capital spending centered around signs of global monetary policies becoming more accommodative, along with improvement in macroeconomic activities.
- The Global Business ESG Index increased by 6.1%, stemming from businesses’ efforts to meet regulatory requirements, stricter disclosure mandates and heightened investor awareness. Globally, stricter environmental regulations, such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, are among top concerns for 29% of businesses, resulting in almost one in four conducting risk assessments or implementing regulatory compliance strategies.
Descriptions and information about the indices can be found on page 24 of the report.
“Businesses are increasingly confident as borrowing costs decline, boosting optimism for higher sales, stronger exports, and reduced financial risks,” said Arun Singh, Global Chief Economist at Dun & Bradstreet. “This confidence is driving capital investments, with easing supply chain pressures supporting growth in the year’s final quarter.”
About the Global Business Optimism Insights Report
The Global Business Optimism Insights report is a synthesis of data from a comprehensive survey encompassing 32 economies, covering approximately 10,000 businesses and 17 sectors, alongside insights from Dun & Bradstreet, leveraging the firm’s proprietary data and economic expertise. The report is an amalgamation of five indices which reflect overall business optimism and expectations about supply chain continuity, financial and investment conditions and ESG initiatives. An index reading above 100 indicates an improvement in optimism relative to the base year (Q3 2023 to Q2 2024), while an index reading below 100 signifies a deterioration in optimism.
View the full report here.
About Dun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, enables companies around the world to improve their business performance. Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud fuels solutions and delivers insights that empower customers to accelerate revenue, lower cost, mitigate risk, and transform their businesses. Since 1841, companies of every size have relied on Dun & Bradstreet to help them manage risk and reveal opportunity. For more information on Dun & Bradstreet, please visit www.dnb.com.
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The promotions span across six practice areas and three regions to drive growth in 2025 and beyond
CHICAGO, Jan. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Heidrick & Struggles (Nasdaq: HSII), a premier provider of global leadership advisory and on-demand talent solutions, today announced key global and regional leader appointments, effective January 1, 2025. The appointed leaders will continue advancing the firm’s objective of delivering exceptional value to clients by fostering differentiated, deep, and durable relationships.
“Having the right leadership in place is increasingly crucial to business performance, growth, and prosperity, making our work more important than ever,” said Tom Monahan, CEO, Heidrick & Struggles. “This dynamic group embodies our values as a firm as well as our unwavering commitment to delivering superior client service. We’re excited to promote these outstanding leaders as they continue to shepherd our clients through their most pressing business and talent challenges.”
These leaders span Heidrick & Struggles’ priority practice and solution areas, as well as multiple regions globally.
Individuals appointed to Regional Leader:
- Anne Rockey, North America
- Richard Guest, Asia Pacific & Middle East
Individual appointed to Global Managing Partner:
- Todd Taylor, Client Driven Growth, a newly created role
Individuals appointed to Executive Search Global Practice Managing Partner:
- Jaimee Eddington, Corporate Officers Practice
- Dominique Fortier, Financial Services Practice
- Chris Bray, Global Technology & Services Practice
- Gustavo Alba, Co-Lead, Private Equity Practice
Individuals appointed to Executive Search Regional Practice Managing Partner:
- Liz Langel, Americas, Financial Services Practice
- Ina Sood, Americas, Healthcare & Life Sciences Practice
- David Burd, Americas, Corporate Officers Practice
- David Crawford, Asia Pacific & Middle East, Global Technology & Services Practice
- Tom Cunningham, Europe & Africa, Global Technology & Services Practice
- Sarah Driscoll, Europe & Africa, Global Technology & Services Practice
- Roman Wecker, Europe & Africa, Industrial Practice
Individuals appointed to Partner-in-Charge:
- Jane Xing, Beijing
- Jessi Gentile, Chicago
- Maliha Jilani, Dubai
- Kim Pomoell, Finland
- Kiwook Kim, Korea
- David Richardson, New York/Stamford
- Christina Besozzi Cary, Washington, D.C.
Individual promoted in Heidrick Consulting:
- Eric Joseph, leading North America on an interim basis
About Heidrick & Struggles
Heidrick & Struggles (Nasdaq: HSII) is a premier provider of global leadership advisory services and on-demand talent solutions, serving the senior talent and consulting needs of the world’s top organizations. Heidrick & Struggles pioneered the profession of executive search more than 70 years ago. Today, we partner with clients to develop future-ready leaders and organizations, combining our expertise in executive search, leadership consulting, and on-demand, critical talent solutions to achieve the highest levels of profitability and performance. Helping our clients change the world, one leadership team at a time.® www.heidrick.com
Media Contact
Bianca Wilson
Global Director, Public Relations
Heidrick & Struggles
[email protected]
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LONDON, Jan. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Finastra, a global provider of financial services software applications, today announced a significant leadership transition. After nearly a decade of transformative leadership, Simon Paris will step down from his role as Chief Executive Officer. Chris Walters has joined Finastra and will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer.
Chris brings a wealth of experience from senior executive leadership positions, driving innovation and scaling technology companies. He recently served as CEO of Pluralsight and Avantax, a leading company within Financial Services, where he orchestrated significant performance improvement and the company’s successful sale. Prior to Pluralsight and Avantax, Chris served in a variety of leadership roles, including being a Partner at McKinsey & Company and the COO of Bloomberg Industry Verticals Group.
On his appointment, Chris said, “I’m excited to join Finastra at this pivotal moment in its journey and am impressed by the significant progress that has been made during Simon’s leadership. I look forward to working with the talented team to drive sustainable growth and continue to deliver more value to our customers, team members, and investors.”
Under Simon’s stewardship, the company has achieved remarkable milestones, including:
- Leading the charge in Open Finance, following the merger of Misys and D+H in 2017 to form Finastra
- Building a loyal customer base of over 8,000 clients in 130 countries, including 45 of the world’s top 50 banks
- Achieving recognition as a leader in Generative AI, with all employees upskilled and ~50 capabilities in progress from ideation to production stages
- Garnering extensive market accolades, including multiple product, culture, and leadership awards, and being named the #1 Banking Technology company, the #2 Financial Technology company, and appearing in the top 15 Software companies worldwide in 2024 alone
- Delivering record financial performance and double-digit Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) growth
As Finastra embarks on its new strategic sprint in 2025, the company is well-positioned for continued success. During the transition period, Simon and Chris will work closely together to ensure a smooth handover.
Simon reflected on his tenure, saying, “This journey with Finastra has been a privilege. Chris is a seasoned professional, and I am honored to ‘pass the baton’ to him. I leave incredibly proud of what Finastra has achieved so far and excited for the company’s future under Chris’s leadership.”
About Finastra
Finastra is a global provider of financial services software applications across Lending, Payments, Treasury and Capital Markets, and Universal (retail and digital) Banking. Committed to unlocking the potential of people, businesses and communities everywhere, its vision is to accelerate the future of Open Finance through technology and collaboration, and its pioneering approach is why it is trusted by ~8,100 financial institutions, including 45 of the world’s top 50 banks. For more information, visit finastra.com.
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AI Impact leverages DXC’s combined consulting, engineering, and secure enterprise services
ASHBURN, Va., Jan. 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC), a leading Fortune 500 global technology services provider, today announced AI Impact, an approach designed to help solve customers’ most pressing challenges. By combining DXC consulting, engineering and secure enterprise services, DXC will help clients across industries securely innovate and drive real business outcomes with AI.
DXC takes a pragmatic approach to AI by focusing on developing solutions that solve real world challenges and support business growth. With DXC’s AI Impact, customers benefit from DXC’s vast industry expertise and technology experience to build solutions, services and experiences together that will deliver real business outcomes using the latest technology innovation. Read more about DXC’s approach here.
“AI has already captured the attention and imagination of industries everywhere. From AI agents to autonomous driving and personalized medicine, companies are taking steps to unlock value from AI, which promises to reshape our world,” said Howard Boville, EVP, Consulting & Engineering Services – Powered by AI. “With DXC’s AI Impact approach, we are helping to push the boundaries of what AI makes possible, guided by our team of consulting, engineering and technology experts to address our clients’ most pressing challenges.”
Customers across industries are leveraging AI Impact, including:
- Automotive: DXC is helping customers leverage AI-powered diagnostic tools to make it easier for automotive manufacturers and service providers to identify potential issues before they become critical, reducing downtime and maintenance costs. DXC is also helping customers leverage AI to personalize every aspect of a vehicle, including personal assistants that learn a driver’s preferences and habits over time to make more intuitive recommendations.
- Public Sector: To provide more transparency, governments are using DXC AI Impact to efficiently engage with citizens and make it easier for them to access public services. This includes the use of AI Agents and AI enhanced processes that streamline and simplify tax, national lending and even public healthcare processes.
- Financial Services and Insurance: DXC is helping customers optimize operations, from underwriting and risk assessment to claims processing and customer service. By working with DXC, financial institutions are leveraging chatbots to make it easy for human agents to respond faster and more accurately to customer inquiries by analyzing thousands of documents in minutes with Generative AI.
- Healthcare: DXC implemented an AI-powered app to help measure patient symptoms in real-time, analyzing data to provide clinicians with insights that enable more accurate diagnoses and treatment plans, improving the quality of care and proactively addressing prescription resistance.
For more information on DXC AI Impact and how we’re working with the most innovative industry leaders to securely innovate, visit here.
Forward Looking Statements
All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute “forward-looking statements.” These statements represent current expectations and beliefs, and no assurance can be given that any result, goal or plan set forth in any forward-looking statement can or will be achieved. Such statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements, many of which are outside of our control. For a written description of these factors, see the section titled “Risk Factors” in DXC’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements which speak only as of the date they are made. We do not undertake any obligation to update or release any revisions to any forward-looking statement or to report any events or circumstances after the date of this document or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.
About DXC Technology
DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. The world’s largest companies and public sector organizations trust DXC to deploy services to drive new levels of performance, competitiveness, and customer experience across their IT estates. Learn more about how we deliver excellence for our customers and colleagues at DXC.com.
CONTACT: Mihir Bellamkonda, Media Relations, [email protected]; Roger Sachs, Investor Relations, [email protected]
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