By Jessica Salerno-Shumaker, OSCPA senior content manager  

From big name companies to home grown businesses, Ohio is ripe for business opportunity for those looking to open here.  

“It’s important to let businesses know that Ohio is open for business,” said Matt Waldo, senior director of research at JobsOhio. “We're a very business friendly state not only from an operating cost perspective, but also from a regulatory perspective. And we have a very diverse economy from end to end in the supply chain.”  

Waldo said Ohio has already established itself as a successful area for key industries such as electric vehicles, aviation and chip manufacturing.  

“Intel is a big deal,” Waldo said. “It was the first new semiconductor manufacturing operation in the entire eastern U.S. in 2022. And in the semiconductor space, there's a whole supply chain that comes with that.”  

Ohio is the seventh largest economy both by GDP and jobs in the U.S. and would be 21st in the world if it were a country.  

“We’re a very diverse economy,” Waldo said. “And we are trying to continue that trend towards strength and diversity in the economy seeding these highly technologically advanced projects and companies and doing it in a geographically equitable way, to the extent that we can across the state.”  

CPAs will be critical in helping those companies succeed in Ohio, Waldo said, and offering the level of care and commitment that is necessary to continue to help grow the economy.   

Giganti will speak to the U.S. and global markets, assess what’s happened in the last year and provide insight into what lies ahead.  

He said starting a year ago, most were predicting a recession. Now that it looks like a recession might be avoided, Giganti said it’s natural for people to wonder where that leaves the markets.  

“Of course, nobody knows what exactly will happen,” he said. “Everything moves on a cycle, and nobody can pinpoint the exactness of the cycle. But it sure seems to be that we're moving in the direction of this still being part of the growth cycle, and not a recession in 2024.”  

A regular question attendees ask is what they should do with their money, and Giganti said the important thing is to keep your money invested.  

“The reality is, even if you don't do anything, and just stay invested, you're going to actually be in pretty good shape when you look at look back over a 10- or 20-year period,” he said. “So don't panic but understand that decisions from a business have to be made in the short run, and that maybe you need to be thinking about it through a different lens today than five years ago.”  

Register for the Strategic Finance and Accounting Conference today!