The 10 Greatest Risks Facing Business

Ernst & Young released a publication earlier in the year outlining the 10 greatest risks businesses would face in 2009.

The top 10 risks identified (2008 rankings in parentheses) were:

1. The credit crunch (2)
2. Regulation and compliance (1)
3. Deepening recession (New)
4. Radical greening (9)
5. Non-traditional entrants (16)
6. Cost cutting (8)
7. Managing talent (11)
8. Executing alliance and transactions (7)
9. Business model redundancy (New)
10. Reputation risks (22)

Now that we are at the end of the year, it is interesting to look back and see how close they were. Was the deepening recession one of the major risks? Was the credit crunch number one? How serious is radical greening?

One thing is clear. Regardless of the specific ranking, all of the items on the list were indeed major sisks during the year AND are relevant to 2010 as well, albeit not necessarily in the same order.

The actual report is a good read and is available for free download from the E&Y site.