That contrasts with 25 per cent of CEOs planning job cuts over the next year, down from nearly half who decreased head count in the past 12 months. Nearly a fifth of UK CEOs say they expect their head count to rise by more than 8 per cent in 2010. Overall, the survey found that 81 per cent of CEOs worldwide are confident of their prospects for the next 12 months, while only 18 per cent said they remained pessimistic.

The results compare with 64 per cent who said they were confident a year ago and 35 per cent who were pessimistic. Thirty-one per cent of CEOs said they were now "very confident" of their short term prospects, up 10 percentage points from last year, a low point in CEO confidence since PwC began its tracking.

The survey revealed striking differences in confidence levels among CEOs in emerging economies and those in developed nations. In North America and Western Europe, for example, about 80 per cent of CEOs said they were confident of growth in the next year. That compared with 91 per cent in Latin America and in China/Hong Kong, and 97 per cent in India. ooking at the longer term, the results were more even. Overall, more than 90 per cent of CEOs expressed confidence in growth over the next three years.

For the future, a total of 60 per cent of CEOs said they expect recovery in their national economies only in second half of 2010 or later, while 13 per cent said recovery was already underway, and 21 per cent said it would set in during the first half of this year. Return to growth was fastest in China, where 67 per cent of CEOs said recovery had begun in 2009. However, nearly twothirds of CEOs in the US and more than 70 per cent in Western Europe said the turnaround would not begin until the half of 2010.

"The fears of a global economic meltdown have receded and CEOs are more upbeat about their prospects," said Dennis Nally, global chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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