Optimism Among Swedish Financial Officers Rising: Survey

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Swedish financial officers are becoming increasingly more optimistic, consistent with the positive economic indicators, the latest SEB Financial Officers' survey showed Wednesday.

The Financial Officers' Index stood at 59 in September, up from 54 in August, and marked the highest reading since May 2008. The survey suggests that respondents are more neutral regarding the current business climate.

More financial officers are expecting volume growth to contribute to higher profitability in 2010, the survey found. Moreover, the officers also regarded price increases as more likely. While most respondents expect prices to be unchanged, about 46% expect them to rise over the next six months.

"Even if cutting costs remains important this finding could indicate that most steps taken to reduce costs have now been completed", Ebba Lindahl, head of Credit Research at SEB said.

At the same time, more than 40% of financial officers said their companies were only mid way through the crisis. "This result has not changed significantly since our last survey in August and suggests that it may still take some time before companies fully recover despite the turnaround in the global economy", Disa Hammar, the co-author of the survey said.

The SEB's Financial Officers' Index, is a quarterly survey whose purpose is to reflect changes of sentiment in the financial environment and facilitate the understanding of economic and financial trends. The latest survey was carried out among 70 of Sweden's largest companies.

(Market News Provided by RTTNews)