The current financial turmoil in the United States was the main concern of leading CEOs and investors when they met on Friday ahead of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting of New Champions.

Three speakers at the session, all heads of major accounting firms, said they do not foresee a global recession despite the current financial crisis.

"We are currently at a very difficult spot," Samuel Dipiazza, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, told reporters.

"But global economic recession is not likely, even though there is a world economic slowdown, because some emerging markets will keep driving the growth."

The discussion took place as the global credit crunch, which originated in the US with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, spread to plague other large financial institutions.

"Individual industries in individual markets are going through a contraction, but as for the economy overall, it's not happening," said Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu CEO James Quigley. Both Dipiazza and Ernst & Young LLP CEO James Turley said they are optimistic about the US government's efforts to get through the crisis.

Quigley said: "The global economic recession will not occur, especially in emerging markets in Asia-Pacific areas, such as China, where it is keeping on building up infrastructure and developing a consumer-based economy that does not so much rely on export."

Premier Wen Jiabao, who has just finished his first official trip to the United Nations, is expected to address the World Economic Forum's meeting on Saturday.

(China Daily September 27, 2008)