Two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, 51 percent of executives who responded to our most recent survey say the world economy is in recovery; 58 percent say so about their own countries. Most expect corporate profits to rise this year from their level in 2009, and 38 percent expect to hire by the end of the year—the greatest share expecting to hire in the near term since before the crisis. But even if companies are coping with the new economy, the results also indicate that executives’ confidence is tenuous.
