Brian Larcombe, chairman of 3i, is confident about the market's future in the face of downbeat results in its survey of confidence levels of UK and continental European private companies.

'There is a bit more uncertainty around and more people talking about a slowing-down of the world economy. But the macro outlook is reasonably robust. The threats are outside of Europe. The key threat is whether the US economy comes down with a bigger bump than is currently expected,' Larcombe said.