San Francisco Chronicle – Bay Area execs’ confidence slips a bit
Still positive, only less so.
That’s the message from the Bay Area Council’s latest survey of business confidence in these parts.
Of the 500 CEOs and senior executives surveyed in the nine Bay Area counties in August, just 41 percent believe economic conditions locally have improved, down 17 points from last quarter’s survey. Forty-four percent see better times ahead, down 19 points from the previous survey.
The council’s business confidence index – a distillation of the survey’s various findings – was a little brighter. It registered 56 on a scale of 100, still in positive territory, though down from the 62 reading last time, and the first decline after four successive quarters of rising confidence since summer 2009. Still, that’s far better than January 2009’s all-time low of 31.
