Only 27% of Hong Kong CEOs think revenue will grow in 2017

They're looking forward to new M&A activities.

While CEOs around the world feel they have plenty to worry about in the year ahead, their confidence in their own growth prospects and their outlook for the global economy are back on the rise, according to PwC's recent survey.

38% (2016: 35%) are very confident about their company’s growth prospects in the next 12 months while 29% (2016:27%) believe global economic growth will pick up in 2017.

The findings released at the World Economic Forum in Davos show that while business leaders are more positive in their outlook, their levels of concern about economic uncertainty (82%), over-regulation (80%) availability of key skills (77%) remain very high. Also worries about protectionism are growing, with 59% of CEO concerned about protectionism, increasing to 64% for CEOs in the United States and Mexico.

Here's more from PwC:

While positive on the benefits of globalisation in building the free movement of capital, goods, and people, CEOs question whether globalisation has done anything to close the gap between rich and poor or mitigated the issue of climate change. This is in contrast to the first PwC CEO survey in 1998 when CEOs were positive about the drivers of globalisation.

In sharp contrast to 2016, CEO’s confidence in their own one year revenue growth is on the rise in nearly every major country across the world with India (71%), Brazil, where confidence levels have more than doubled (57%), Australia (43%) and the UK (41%) topping the table.

Confidence also rose by 11 points in China to 35%, 6 points in the US to 39% and 3 points in Germany to 31%. In Switzerland confidence levels have more than doubled to 34%.

Bucking the confidence trend are Spain, Mexico and Japan where confidence levels have dropped, markedly so in Japan where confidence has plunged from 28% in 2016 to 14% today.

When asked what drives growth, organic expansion tops the agenda for over three quarters of CEOs (79%) in the coming year, while 41% are planning new merger and acquisition activity in 2017 and nearly a quarter (23%) of all CEOs intend to strengthen their innovation capabilities to capitalise on new opportunities.