Well, this has been a busy first couple of months to 2025. The news agenda has responded predictably to the arrival or President Trump, revving up to manic levels as everyone responds to the flurry of executive orders, foreign policy interventions and corporate reactions to his second term.

A majority of people, I think it’s fair to say, see Trump as something of a wrecking-ball (and that might be putting it mildly). It’s very deliberate – and a very ‘Silicon Valley’ approach: “move fast and break things” as Facebook used to say in its corporate creed.

It’s not worth adding to the debate here. But it does feel, more broadly, that things are shifting fast in 2025. After all, a wrecking-ball destroys, but also opens space that we have to fill with new building. The question is, how do we do that positively?

Here in the UK, there’s a clear tension between economic nervousness and the desire to build. Based on how my own start of the year has been, the need to take a firm grip on change has been taken up by many in business. We’ve been busy, too.

Interestingly, a lot of the work has been permanent postings, and often these are coming out of boards’ need to put the right finance people in to serve their long-term strategies. It’s not knee-jerk response to events: people from our relationship network are coming to Pitch Hill because we take a tailored approach to their needs.

I’ve been working with a tech business, for example, where the group FC I put in became CFO and now needs a new number two. It was a fast turnaround, but demanded much more than a tick-box approach to support growth and an ambitious finance chief.

We know our tailored process delivers. A few months ago, we found an interim CFO for another tech company, an assignment we picked up when a big search firm failed to find the right candidate. This box-brand firm boasts about advanced tech and even use of AI – but failed to do the basics. Our candidate is now set to take the role permanently.

(I’m not against revolutionary tech like AI – actually, it’s ideal for our more granular, personal approach, because it helps me sift through the really insightful interviews we conduct with candidates. My tip: you must train your AI really hard – and always treat it like a tireless intern (see below), not a partner to whom you can hand off work…)

Interestingly, a lot of the busy-ness over the past quarter has come about because October and November were so quiet. That cleared space in my workload; I was able to contact and clean my entire database, triggering loads of interesting and fruitful interactions. Which brings us back to the wrecking ball. Whether it’s a new president, a fresh company opportunity, or a revolutionary technology, how we respond to radical change – and spaces it opens up – is the key.

- Ray Nicholls

Things to do...

***Now...***
**Get tax advice**
We thought Budget changes kicking off in April would be worst of it. But the public finances still need juice, and with further urgent spending (plus tariff fun), that’s going to mean more change. Plan ahead.

***Next...***
**Get in touch**
The big contacts book refresh we did at the end of 2024 has triggered so many conversations and updates, and opened up lots of opportunities – both sought and offered. If we haven't yet, we should talk...

***Later...***
**Get ready to buy**
The data for PE-backed business remains dicey. Persistent low fund churn, assets marked too high and potential changes to tax rules in the US could see a scramble for sales – at good prices?

Lies, damned lies, and...

Third-third-third

European CFOs are split almost evenly on their outlook for 2025, according to an end-of-year survey by management consultancy Horváth. A third expected their businesses to perform positively this year, while another 32% foresee stable growth. The remainder? “Depressed” performance or things deteriorating.

Unsurprisingly for a management consultancy, the report identifies “performance management” as a key enabler of growth (with a bit of AI thrown into the mix). But closer to home, the “thirds” in a CIPD survey paint a more mixed picture. A third of employers, for example, say they “plan to reduce their headcount through redundancies or recruiting fewer workers.” Confidence is down, and the upcoming employer’s NI rise is denting sentiment further.

But wait! One final third: 33% of organisations are facing hard-to-fill vacancies. “This rises to half of employers in compulsory education and 46% of employers in construction – a key sector for fulfilling the Government's large-scale infrastructure plans.,” says the CIPD.

In other words, there are clear hot-spots (and not-spots) in the economy. But getting the right people into key roles and sectors is the must-have. It’s not enough to throw bodies at business growth, even if you can afford to; they have to be the right people, too.

On trend

AI: seriously, this again?

No, we’re not rowing back on the “coming AI bust” we talked about last time. That’s still very much on the cards. According to AI-watcher Ed Zitron, “every single company in generative AI is deeply unprofitable, Microsoft is pulling capex, and OpenAI spent $9bn in 2024 to lose $5bn.” And spreadsheets still rule! But that idea of use-cases settling into well-defined, well-trained products that solve small productivity issues has really taken hold now.

It's particularly pertinent for finance functions. The old problems around numbers remain true: Large Language Models, in particular, are text probability machines and just don’t understand maths at all. (Same with AI image generation: it can piece together a person or a cat – but routinely fails completely to render drawings including actual text.)

But although most people are sick of CoPilot butting into Word and PowerPoint documents (hence the memes above - featured in the FT, and apparently emanating from Deutsche Bank), people and providers are starting to get smarter about the potential, minimal, use-cases.

Andreesen Horowitz (the PE firm that’s most boosterish for on-trend tech like blockchain and AI) adds that this kind of productivity solution is key to solving a looming recruitment crisis as old-school accountants move into retirement. But swerving the hype over an all-capable general AI has cemented the more modest concept of “infinite interns” (which has been around for a couple of years) as a way forward. In short: it can be useful but take nothing it generates at face value... just like you would the world of a school-leaver intern.

The other factor is that the trend is now unstoppable. According to one survey, more than a quarter of job descriptions for CFOs now require some kind of AI experience. This is nonsense, of course: when you craft your search criteria with Pitch Hill, we focus on things that actually matter to your board, not what a search firm’s PR department think matters. Interestingly, I searched for ‘AI for CFOs’, and got a LinkedIn post from a recruiter… that was so obviously written by ChatGPT that I cringed.

But we do seem to be heading to the bottom of the Gartner Hype Cycle on existing AI models, and that can only mean one thing: we’re probably in touching distance of the Plateau of Productivity. This recent academic paper on GenAI in finance (some of which map nicely to finance functions) offers some pointers.

Words from the wise

Substack attack

We all know LinkedIn: it’s settled down into a mix of booster-ish posts about motivational hacks, career news and back-patting ex-colleagues. (Truthfully, I love it – for all its faults, it a wonderful way to stay in touch that hasn’t been taken over by shouty people airing objectionable opinions.) The “micro-blogging” sites are what they always were – lots of Xitter users have gone to Bluesky, but for most people it’s an identical experience of overly hot takes and boorish replies. Facebook? Your mileage may vary… Reddit is still a warren of fun rabbit-holes (and we’ve written about it before).

What about Substack – the site where you can subscribe to longer writing by (usually) more thoughtful people? Well, its surge in popularity since 2023 means it’s a mix of all of the above: companies have arrived, lots of businesspeople are posting there now (mostly US, to be honest), but there’s still a social media vibe. And because it’s long-form-friendly, there’s lots of wise people posting thoughtfully.

Some suggestions to get you started…

Finance and management

The CFO Office – Kind of LinkedIn-ish, but you can rip through posts framing the modern finance role. Sometimes fun.

Big by Matt Stoller – US-centric, politics heavy, but solid political economy analysis.

Back of Mind – we’ve featured Dan Davies before. He’s bristly, a management and finance nerd, but thought-provoking.

The Reluctant CFO – Adi Dehejia for a US audience, but lots of good advice for finance execs anywhere. (The link is on the pointlessness of financial projections…)

Just interesting

Age of Invention – Anton Howes writes essays on the history of business and industry.

The Garden of Forking Paths – Brian Klass knits together history, business, politics and society.

The Bluestocking – Helen Lewis is always interesting and rational, and links to fascinating writing. BONUS: her free link to the Atlantic story of the Murdoch empire’s tell-all court case. Succession… but real!

Passé meme of the month

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