CFOs: second recession 'unlikely'.

• Author: Ladd, Scott
• Position: THE ECONOMY - Chief financial officers - Survey

The largest employers in North America expect the pace of economic recovery to remain slow, but they don't believe it will lead to a second recession, a new survey from Deloitte reports.

The firm's CFO Signals quarterly review, which tracks the opinions and actions of leading chief financial officers, found that nearly 80 percent of CFOs polled in the third quarter were planning for a "U-shaped" recovery, with two-thirds of the total saying they expect a "wide-bottomed U," or bathtub-shaped recovery. Only 9 percent say they expect a "W-shaped" or so-called "double-dip" recovery.

CFOs remain relatively optimistic about the growth prospects of their own companies. But their assessments of the overall business environment--driven to a great extent by growing concern over persistently high unemployment and its implications for consumer demand--are less confident.

"It is important to note that many companies still have a long way to go before returning to their pre-recession trends," said Sanford Cockrell III, the national managing partner of Deloitte's U.S. CFO Program. "At this point, you have to wonder if companies' projections are starting to lag their perceptions," he said. "If the employment picture does not improve and if general pessimism continues to rise, we would expect pessimism to start having a larger impact on companies' earnings and investment expectations."

Nearly half of those polled financial officers--47 percent--are more optimistic about their...