As Dan Gross posted on this blog yesterday, optimistic CEOs are going to be hard to find at Davos this year. How hard is what PricewaterhouseCoopers tried to answer last night with their traditional pre-Davos release of the Annual Global CEO Survey. The key results from 1,124 CEOs surveyed between September and December 2008 in over 50 countries and across all major industries:

-          CEOs are focusing on survival, not growth. Only 21 percent of CEOs worldwide are confident that their companies’ revenues will grow in the next 12 months, a plunge from 50 percent last year. Seventy percent say their companies are affected by the credit crisis, 70 percent of those are delaying investment as a result.

-          Decoupling (one of the now-defunct themes discussed at Davos last year) is dead. Just 15 percent of U.S. and Western European CEOs had confidence in revenue growth, compared to 31 percent in Asia, 21 percent in Latin America, and 21 percent as well in emerging Europe. The plunge in confidence from a year ago was much sharper among emerging-market CEOs than in the developed world. The only break in the gloom is India, where 70 percent of CEOs still have high confidence in growth.

-          CEOs clearly expect a slow recovery at best – three years from now, only 34 percent of CEOs are confident in revenue growth, down from 43 percent last year.

-          The one surprising piece of good news: only a quarter of CEOs said they plan to cut staff in 2009.

It’s a grim backdrop for this year’s gathering.