The findings from a poll of more than 1,100 CEOs sets a grim backdrop to a four-day meeting of the world's business and political elite in the Swiss ski resort, which begins on Wednesday.

Crisis-hit bankers are thin on the ground at the snow-covered mountain town but policymakers will be working behind the scenes ahead of a summit of the G20 group of big and emerging countries in April and a G8 summit in July.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will both address the meeting later on Wednesday to give their policy prescriptions for dealing with the worst economic crisis in 80 years.

The annual PricewaterhouseCoopers survey suggests the need for action is urgent, as a crisis that started in the banking system hammers revenues across all regions and industries.

Worldwide, just 21 per cent of CEOs said they were very confident of growing revenue in the next 12 months, down from 50 per cent a year ago.

And hopes for a short 'V'-shaped recession appear to have evaporated with most business leaders expecting no more than a slow and gradual recovery over the next three years.

'The three-year view is a bit better but the bad news is it is not that much better,' said Tony Poulter, global head of consulting at PwC. 'The message is: there is a long term but we are not going to see it dawning immediately.'

Collective gloom
Delegates in Davos were united in the view that an economic upturn is some way off.

Lars Thunnel, head of the International Finance Corporation, the private arm of the World Bank, said he expected economic malaise sparked by the credit crisis to linger.

'I think the experience and some of the research shows that it will take a number of years,' Mr Thunell, who helped mastermind a 'bad bank' in Sweden during a 1990s crisis, told Reuters.

Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's Asia chairman, agreed the next three years would be very tough.

'We have to face up to the fact that the recovery, when it comes, later this year or early next year, is going to be anaemic,' he told Reuters.

'The concept of a vigorous 'V'-shaped recovery is for business cycles of the past but not for this post-bubble, post-crisis business cycle. It is going to be a long slog in 2010, in 2011.'

That grim scenario has left sovereign fund Dubai International Capital wary of making big long-term investments even though it sees asset prices at reasonable levels.

'There going to be a great opportunity in the next year or two to acquire assets at historically unprecedented levels,' Chief Executive Sameer al-Ansari told Reuters.

But he added: 'We're still very nervous about making some big bets - we see the financial crisis getting worse. There's not going to be a magic wand solution to the problem.'

Lehman fallout
PwC's Mr Poulter said the situation had deteriorated significantly since September, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch.

Back in September, only 46 per cent of business leaders interviewed thought the banking crisis would affect them but by December that had risen to 67 per cent.

Even this gloomy picture - with confidence the lowest in the survey's seven-year history - may be over-optimistic, given the slew of bad news since it was completed in early December with recession across much of the world now confirmed.

In contrast to last year, corporations based in previously hot emerging markets were equally gloomy, a fact which PwC said had exposed the idea of the 'decoupling' of developed and developing world markets as a myth.

The Washington-based Institute for International Finance, a grouping of the world's biggest banks, said on Tuesday it expects private capital flows to emerging markets to drop by nearly two-thirds to US$165 billion (S$247 billion) this year. -- REUTERS

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