Published: 23 October 2026
As globalization gives way to a “go-it-alone” world, CFOs face an urgent need to reassess corporate strategies and priorities, balancing profitability and resilience, against escalating geopolitical and sovereignty pressures. When doing so, the CFO will be constrained by four macro megatrends: eroding public trust, increasingly scarce human capital, concentrated power, and insecure resources. What organizations need more than anything else today is for CFOs to fight the narrative of inevitable outcomes, technological or other. Deliberate choices are what will shape the future, and passively ceding control is itself a choice. The CFO has never carried greater responsibility or influence than they do today. Every capital decision, and corporate priority, can reinforce or alter these megatrends, to further reshape markets, the social contract and communities, in real time.
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