CEOs are the most downbeat they’ve been since the 2008-09 financial crisis, while chief economists are braced for a global slowdown.
| Business leaders and economists anticipate the world will tumble into recession this year, and two in five chief executives are worried that their companies may not see out the decade.for the World Economic Forum’s week-long annual jamboree in the Swiss ski town of Davos, two separate surveys cast a shadow of pessimism over the denuded alpine slopes.
“It’s the speed and the magnitude of these trends that has an interdependency, a connection and an amplifying effect on their organisations, so that if they don’t do something, they’re really in trouble.”But he said CEOs were generally not as despondent as they had been after the global financial crisis in 2009, as this time they had more of a sense of what they need to do to survive.
They share a near-unanimous expectation that growth will be weak in the US and Europe, as interest rates put a brake on business activity. Just under half of all respondents forecast weak or very weak growth in China, while the other half said growth would be moderate or strong. There was a similarly even split over whether inflation in China would be “low” or “moderate”.
“Many global CEOs are looking at China, and saying: ‘still [an] opportunity, maybe some risks. I’ve just got to be smarter and more agile in managing those risks’,” Mr Moritz said.
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