Chief Executive Officers of major companies around the world have expressed fears over the likelihood of a possible bullish year for capital markets in 2012.

The CEOs, who predicted this in a survey, were pessimistic over profitable activities in global capital markets by the end of the year.

A survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was made available to our correspondent on Tuesday, showed that 64 per cent of global CEOs said there would be relative instability in the market this year.

The CEOs explained that their prediction was based on the fact that the global economy has been fraught with so many challenges in recent months.

According to them, the effect of these global challenges, which affected most markets in 2011, was likely to spill over into this year.

In the Nigerian market, for instance, the major market indicators had recorded significant losses in the year 2011, with the Nigerian Stock Exchange’s All-Share Index falling by 16.3 per cent from 24,770.52 points in January 2011 to 20,730.63 points on the last trading day of 2011.

Similarly, the market capitalisation of the 186 listed equities lost 17.4 per cent from N7.91tn at the beginning of the year to N6.53tn on Friday, December 30, 2011.

Analysts had said, “Across the globe, it was a dull year for equity markets as uncertainty underlay key economies for the most part of the year as the worsening Eurozone debt crisis and the lack of definite direction on solutions to the problem triggered further flight by investors to safety.

“This was amplified by underlying risks in currency devaluation and inflation in emerging and frontier markets, especially in Africa.”

The PwC report showed that about 48 per cent of the 1,258 CEOs surveyed worldwide believed that the global economy would decline further in the year 2012, while only 15 per cent of the respondents believed that the global economy will improve in the next 12 months.

The Managing Partner, PwC Nigeria, Mr. Ken Igbokwe, said that the results from the survey were not unexpected, as companies were worried generally worried over the challenges in the global economy, especially since the global meltdown.

He said, “CEO confidence is decidedly down as they deal with the aftershocks to the recession, and the CEOs are disappointed with the course of the global economy and the pace of recovery. The optimism that had been building cautiously since 2008 has begun to recede.

“The ongoing debt crisis in the European Union, along with other lingering economic uncertainties, has deflated confidence in business growth around the world.”

He added that even the fast growing economies of Asia and Latin America were not immune to the realities of continued economic stagnation, contrary to the notion that the global economy has decoupled (recovered).

Source: Punch/Udeme Ekwere