Middle East CFOs are generally more optimistic than their European counterparts - Deloitte

The survey is designed to benchmark corporate financial attitudes in the region and included participants from North Africa, the Levant region and the Gulf with business interests spread across a wide range of sectors. The Deloitte CFO Survey is the only survey for major corporate users of capital that gauges attitudes toward the general economic outlook, financing valuations, and risk.

"CFOs in the region believe that governments have been responsive in addressing the needs of the private sector in this downturn with unprecedented injections of capital and liquidity employed to support the credit markets. This has set the stage for projected regional GDP growth for 2010 which outpaces the rest of the world by more than double,"

said James Babb, CFO Program Leader for Deloitte Middle East.

The Deloitte survey also reveals the extent to which CFOs have in turn been active on various fronts to reduce the scale of expenditure and delay investment in order to manage their organizations effectively in the downturn and position them for anticipated future growth. Nearly 89% of the CFOs plan to or have already cut on discretionary spending such as travel, hotels, entertainment and training, while 40% expect to cut or have already cut current employee numbers and 71% are reducing hiring personnel.

In addition to providing an in-depth regional overview of CFO opinions on issues such as external financing, balance sheet risk, real estate valuations and M&A activity, Deloitte Middle East CFO survey includes a comparison with global CFO surveys from the second quarter undertaken in countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Spain, UK, South Africa and Singapore.

"The comparison of the Middle East CFO survey results with those reported by other Deloitte member firms around the world is an important perspective as it presents the relative CFO -sentiment around critical financial themes in an increasingly integrated and interdependent global economy. For example, in comparison to other Dleoitte CFO surveys conducted around the globe during the second quarter of 2009, Middle East CFOs are generally more optimistic than their European counterparts," said James Babb.