Global CEOs enter 2025 with optimism: PwC survey highlights key trends and insights on the outlook for growth

What is the global sentiment among CEOs when entering into 2025? Surprisingly optimistic, according to PwC’s newly launched Annual Global CEO Survey that featured responses from more than 4 700 CEOs from across the globe.
During this year’s first Executive Outlook session organised by Medicon Village that gathered close to 40 executive leaders from the life science sector in an exclusive dinner setting, PwC presented fresh findings from its 28th edition of the Annual Global CEO Survey that was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland just a few days before.
Guest speakers Jonas Wendt and Caroline Älmeby from PwC compared Sweden to the global respondents as well as highlighted key insights for the life science industry, which led into a moderated discussion together with Medicon Village Innovation’s Deputy CEO Sarah Lidé.
Some key insights that stood out during the session:
- Despite geopolitical and trade tensions, global CEOs are in general optimistic about the global economic outlook – 58% expect global economic growth to increase over the next 12 months, which is a significant increase from 38% at the start of 2024, and only 18% two years ago. Health, pharma and life science are especially optimistic, with 66% believing in increased global economic growth in the coming year.
- As a sector, health, pharma and life science is less concerned about macroeconomic volatility and geopolitical conflict, and what’s more top of mind for these CEOs are factors such as inflation, cyber risks, and talent.
- The availability of key talent stands out as a particular key concern – 28% of CEOs within health, pharma and life science believe their companies are extremely exposed to the threat of lower availability of workers with key skills in the next 12 months, compared to 23% across all sectors.
- CEOs in Sweden are not fully exploring the potential of AI implementation compared to the rest of the world – for example, while 32-34% of global CEOs have reported that Gen AI has increased their companies’ revenue and profitability, only 15-17% of CEOs in Sweden have experienced the same results.
- Sweden is ahead in climate-friendly investments, with 7 out of 10 Swedish CEOs having initiated such investments in the last 12 months, versus 6 out of 10 globally. One-third of global CEOs have also reported increased revenue as a result of these investments. However, barriers remain in taking further steps towards climate action, with global CEOs seeing the top three barriers being regulatory complexity (48%), lack of demand from external stakeholders (44%), and lower returns for climate-friendly investments (43%).
Executive Outlook is a C-level network hosted and organised by Medicon Village that meets 2-3 times a year, where experts bring insights and discussions that are top of mind for the executive agenda in the life science sector. If you are a life science executive leader who is interested to join future Executive Outlook sessions, you are welcome to reach out to Sarah Lidé at sarah.lide@mediconvillage.se.
For further reading, you can find the full PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey report here.