Economic recovery after COVID-19: Will large companies in Europe fare better than the global economy?

As countries in Europe begin a gradual reboot of their economies, CEOs and Chairs of major industrial companies in Europe expect the global economy to recover slowly. A majority of respondents (53 percent) say it will take between one and two years for the global economy to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, and 45 percent expect it will take more than two years. However, 54 percent of CEOs said that if the COVID-19 pandemic were to end now, their revenue would return to early 2020 levels in less than one year, and 14 percent expected it to recover within three months. Could the recovery be less difficult for large industrial companies than for other parts of the economy? Perhaps the larger businesses in the survey have more resilience and liquidity to weather the storm than small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up more than half the global economy. Another possible explanation is that industrial firms are more likely to benefit from pent-up demand than service companies once the economy starts to recover.