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Concerns that the global recovery could be derailed began last summer when a devaluation of the Chinese currency sparked a meltdown on the Shanghai stock exchange. A series of economic downgrades to the Chinese and US economies since then, coupled with a rise in US interest rates, have fuelled investors’ misgivings about optimistic forecasts for a recovery in economic fortunes.

Adding to the concerns of a sharp downgrade in global growth this year, a survey for the consultants PwC before the Davos meeting revealed that two-thirds of chief executives saw more threats facing their businesses than three years ago. And the head of the Swiss banking giant UBS, Axel Weber, turned the screw by warning that the world was stuck in an era of low growth.  Last week, an investment analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland advised clients to “sell everything” except the safest high grade bonds after warning of a “cataclysmic” year and the strong likelihood of a stock market crash. His comments came after the chancellor, George Osborne, warned in a new year speech of a “cocktail of threats” to the UK’s prospects from an increasingly uncertain world economy.