Corporate Debt and Treasury Report 2025

This year's Corporate Debt and Treasury Survey was launched in early January. Given the volatility of the macro-economic landscape in the opening quarter (and ongoing) of the year – with the implementation and then the partial suspension of tariffs sending shock waves across global markets - our data derived from the survey is best seen as a snapshot of the respondents' then current views and intentions. We explore this theme further in Section 1 (Tariffs and turmoil) where it is notable that there was a significant increase in the number of respondents reporting that the macro-economic and geo-political events had a "material negative impact" on their businesses and, relatedly, that there were far fewer respondents anticipating that those events would have no or minor impact on their 2025 debt strategy. Interestingly, the data suggests a polarisation of borrowers in the corporate debt space - there were increases in both the number of respondents anticipating that they would be increasing their debt requirements to fund acquisition opportunities and the respondents anticipating that they would be decreasing debt requirements. There was also a notable increase in the number of respondents anticipating having to dispose of assets to raise funds.