BUSINESS confidence has nearly doubled during the past quarter, but only half of companies think the UK has now reached the bottom of the downturn, research will show today.
Around 42% of senior executives think their business prospects are now good, up from just 22% during the first quarter of the year, according to a new report from KPMG.
Only one in four executives think their prospects are still poor, compared with 37% in the spring. But, despite their optimism about their own prospects, business leaders are far gloomier about the wider economy, with 54% considering the UK economic outlook to be bad, although this is an improvement on the 81% who felt this way last time the research was carried out.
Around 55% of executives now think the economy has reached the bottom, with 49% expecting the dip to last for less than a year, but 42% think the economy is on a downward curve.
