Just over half of the large companies and financial institutions responding to a Greenwich Associates survey say they expect the recession to last another year.

The firm reports that, worldwide, 55% of companies are anticipating another 12 months of global recession, 41% expect it to end sooner than that, including 12% of survey respondents who expect to see a global economic recovery in the next six months. Another 29% predict that recovery will come in seven to 12 months.

At the other end of the spectrum, Greenwich notes that one in 10 survey respondents expect the global recession to last another three or more years.

It also reports that “Canadian companies and institutions are the most optimistic, with nearly half expecting a global recovery within the year”, and 14% of Canadian respondents think the global recession is already over.

The least optimistic respondents are in the UK, where only 20% of companies and institutions expect global recovery in the next year; 56% think the global recession will last another one to two years, and 16% expect it to continue for three years or longer.

IE