The Boardroom Bellwether 2025

Business outlook

The report paints a fairly gloomy outlook on the UK and global economy over the coming year, with a steep reduction this year in respondents who felt the competitiveness of the UK economy was likely to evolve over the next five years down from almost half to around a third. The uncertainties on economic conditions focused on US and UK policy, tariffs and inflation, with internal factors ranking as more manageable.  

With that in mind, companies are looking to efficiencies over growth, with no respondents expecting capital expenditure to rise significantly in the year ahead.  Strategic priorities for boards mostly focused on enhancing operational efficiencies, with over half of respondents listing this as their main priority. 
Of particular note was the fact that only one in eight respondents felt that the London Stock Exchange could halt its decline over the next five years. Proposed reforms to the UK capital markets are vital to revive market confidence, although respondents also made the case for ensuring that London’s reputation for strong governance reputation remained intact.

Risk 

Unsurprisingly, cyber risk is the leading perceived risk, with 71% of respondents expecting hacking attempts to increase during 2025/6. The number of high profile hacking cases in the news recently has no doubt put this even more front and foremost for directors.  AI is also a notable risk, with the report mentioning “uneven adoption of AI as critical areas of concern”. AI implementation varies across respondents, with quoted companies embracing AI significantly more than other organisations.  

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI)

Also expected, given some of the shifting global political opinions on DEI, many respondents will be reviewing or reframing their DEI activities and objectives during the coming year.  However, encouragingly only 6% plan to definitely reduce activities versus the 15% who plan to invest more. 

Gender and, to a slightly lesser extent, ethnicity are reporting at good levels, with business experience and geographical diversity also having positive results.  Socio-economic background and disability show the most lacking diversity criteria, with more than a third of boards not intending to look further at addressing these areas currently.   

 
Regulation

The report highlights the pressures being felt by businesses from red tape and “excessive” business regulation. However, to provide some further context, in quoted companies, the proportion of respondents who felt regulation was “too much” was 77%, up from the 64% reported across all organisations. However, only 10% of those quoted company respondents felt that the regulation was “very excessive”. Supporting detail from respondents suggests it is more finding balance between reporting and managing the increasing non-financial reporting required by regulation with business growth and management.

Governance 

The responses on board optimisation showed an interesting statistic on the effectiveness of one to one coaching for boards, although only 27% of boards use this approach. External performance reviews also showed good levels of effectiveness.

Read the full CGI Report here: https://www.cgi.org.uk/about-us/cgi-news/2025/boards-brace-for-risk-as-confidence-in-uk-markets-wanes-bellwether-2025/

To find out more on how Law Debenture’s Corporate Secretarial Services team can support with externally facilitated board performance reviews please see our dedicated webpage.