Only 25% of top executives predict their companies will exist in their...

Only 25% of top executives predict their companies will exist in their current forms 25 years from now, while another 53% believe their firms will change extensively, according to the latest Financial Executives Institute/Duke University Corporate Outlook Survey. ‘‘The biggest changes are expected among high-tech, banking and finance firms,’’ said John Graham, a finance professor at Duke University and director of the survey. Around 37% of the CFOs surveyed think the U.S. will have a shared currency with Canada, while 30% said that was unlikely to happen. And 17% of those polled said the U.S. and Mexico would have a shared currency by 2025, but 53% disagreed. Around 77% of the 277 firms plan to increase their employees by an average 5%. Some 89% reported their firms are having a hard time hiring skilled workers, compared with five years ago. Hiring has become so difficult, in fact, that 86% of those surveyed said they would pay a premium to hire skilled workers. The CFOs surveyed expect wages to increase at a mean rate of 4.8% in 2000 as a result of the tight labor market, with the greatest increases averaging 7.9% in the high-tech industries.