Greek finance chiefs have grown more cautious over the past year but remain far more optimistic than their European counterparts, according to a Deloitte survey that also found mounting concern over geopolitical risk and supply chain disruption, driven chiefly by fears over energy prices and conflict in the Middle East.
The CFO Survey Greece 2026, which Deloitte Greece conducted online in April among more than 100 chief financial officers and other senior finance executives at Greek companies, found that 39% felt more optimistic about their company’s financial prospects than they had three months earlier, down from 44% a year ago. The share who felt less optimistic nearly doubled, to 22% from 12%. It is the second year Deloitte Greece has run the study.
Executives elsewhere in Europe were gloomier. The Greek study is part of Deloitte’s broader European CFO Survey, which polled more than 1,100 finance chiefs in 12 countries in March and April. Across those countries, only 20% of respondents said they were more optimistic, while 44% said they were less so.
Greek respondents also expect stronger results compared to their european peers, with 69% anticipating higher revenue over the next 12 months, compared with 59% of their European peers. On earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), 63% of Greek executives expect an increase, against 35% across Europe. Still, the share of Greek companies bracing for lower EBITDA rose to 21% from 14% a year earlier.
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Uncertainty weighs on both groups. In Greece, 64% rated the external financial and economic uncertainty facing their business as high or very high, up from 44% last year. The European figure was 69%.
Geopolitics Tops the List of Risks
Geopolitical risk was the most widely cited threat, named by 84% of Greek respondents as a significant risk over the next 12 months, up from 68% in 2025. Concern about supply chain disruption more than doubled, to 44% from 19%, a far higher level than the 17% recorded among European finance chiefs.
Asked to name their top three geopolitical concerns, 70% of Greek executives mentioned energy supply or price shocks affecting Europe, and 55% mentioned a military escalation in the Middle East. Shipping and logistics disruptions followed at 45%.
High energy costs have already taken a toll. Forty-five percent of respondents said Europe’s high energy prices had a moderate or significant negative impact on their profitability and investment decisions over the past two years. Looking ahead, 51% expect recent developments in Iran and the Middle East, and the possibility of sustained disruption to oil and gas supplies, to have a moderate or significant negative impact on profitability and investment at their European facilities over the next year.
Borrowing costs are a growing concern as well. The share citing higher interest rates as a significant risk nearly doubled, to 24% from 13%, while worry about currency fluctuations rose to 19% from 11%.
A Turn Toward Acquisitions
Acquisitions are now a likely priority for 46% of companies, up from 29% a year ago, a change Deloitte described as the “most remarkable” in this year’s survey. Interest in entering new markets moved the other way, with 35% saying such expansion was unlikely, compared with 25% last year. Deloitte said that in an uncertain climate, companies appear to see buying established market share or capabilities as less risky than building operations from scratch.
Nearly half of companies, 49%, said cutting operating expenses was likely to be a priority over the next year, up from 43% in 2025. For 62%, the priority is managing working capital, the cash tied up in day to day operations, more efficiently; the survey asked about it for the first time this year. Deloitte tied both trends to high interest rates, which have made outside financing more expensive and pushed companies to find cash within their own operations.
Finance chiefs also report a slightly bigger say in company strategy. Fifty-four percent said their departments were very involved in strategic decisions, up from 51% last year.
AI Use Climbs, but Spreadsheets Persist
Digital transformation was named a likely priority by 78% of Greek finance chiefs, more than double the European average of 36%. Their departments are already adopting new tools. The share using artificial intelligence rose to 32% from 10% in a year, while use of business intelligence software, which turns company data into reports and dashboards, climbed to 68% from 53%. Use of financial planning platforms rose to 36% from 25%.
The new tools sit alongside older systems that still do most of the work. Ninety-three percent of finance departments rely on enterprise resource planning systems, the software companies use to run accounting, purchasing and other core functions, and 73% still use spreadsheets. The most common complaint, cited by 49%, was that these systems do not connect with one another, which Deloitte described as the main obstacle to modernizing finance. Only 13% said they were mostly satisfied with their technology, down from 20% a year earlier.
The share of finance departments describing their processes and controls as well defined and documented slipped to 45% from 50%. Deloitte said the drop reflected a growing workload rather than weaker capabilities, as finance teams take on sustainability and other nonfinancial data that require significant updates to existing controls.
Green Financing and New EU Rules
Sustainability ranks high on the agenda, with 72% of respondents calling their environmental, social and governance strategy significant or very significant to their company. Green and sustainability-linked financing was the source most often expected to play an important role in funding companies in the coming years, cited by 69%. State aid followed at 59%, including Greece’s National Development Law, which offers incentives for private investment, and ESPA, the program through which the country channels European Union structural funds.
Preparation for the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which sets new disclosure rules for companies, is uneven. On a five-point scale, 23% of respondents placed their company at the two lowest levels of readiness, 39% in the middle and 38% at the two highest. Sixteen percent said they were not aware at all of the directive’s digital tagging requirements, which are designed to make sustainability data machine-readable.
“This year’s findings show a picture full of contradictions,” said Konstantinos Motsakos, a partner and Finance Operate leader at Deloitte Greece. “The use of artificial intelligence in finance departments tripled in a year, but the critical question remains: Do we really trust its results to make decisions?”
“The question is no longer whether we will transform or whether we use AI, but how, through which processes and, above all, with what strategy,” he said. “Uncertainty is no longer only geopolitical. It is economic and regulatory, and it concerns governance models and the availability of talent. In this environment, it is not enough for a CFO to manage numbers. He has to provide answers to precisely these questions.”
Source: OT.gr, Deloitte