Surprising survey results… “Corporate leaders must act to survive.”

The prospect of a global recession is of concern to business representatives who are trying to assess its potential consequences for their countries and companies, concluded a survey conducted by PWC on the eve of the Davos Forum.

Of the 4,410 CEOs surveyed by PWC last October and November, 73% expect global growth to slow down over the next 12 months.

It was the worst performance since PWC began conducting investor surveys in 2011. And 2 out of 5 CEOs feared their companies wouldn’t last decades.

Executives have identified the three biggest threats facing their business: inflation, macroeconomic volatility, and geopolitics.

Remarkably in the report, about 40% of respondents are not confident that their companies will retain the ability to economically survive for 10 years if they do not change their business, and this result was the main surprise in the survey results, according to the head of the company’s international network, Bob Moritz.

“In the short term, companies are worried about how to deal with price pressures,” said Moritz. “In the long term, supply chains, climate factors and technology are the main challenges.”

“Corporate leaders must now take action to survive over the next two years and grow over the next 10 years,” the expert added.

The results also showed that about 60% of respondents do not plan to cut jobs and 80% of them will not cut wages.

In a separate survey released by the World Economic Forum Davos, more than half of the prominent senior economists at the forum expected Europe to continue to face high inflation in the current 2023.

More than two-thirds of them warn of a global recession in 2023 as companies cut spending.

Source: Bloomberg.