More evidence that the global credit crunch is easing comes from the latest Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) which reveals that privately held businesses (PHBs) around the world are increasingly confident that access to finance will be easier in 2010. 35% of businesses said they thought access to finance would be 'more' or 'much more accessible' in 2010 compared with only 14% who were similarly positive 12 months ago.

Businesses were also asked how supportive they believed their lenders to be. 69% feel their lender is currently being 'supportive' or 'very supportive' towards their business - unchanged from 2009. However, huge global differences appear when lender support is compared to accessibility of finance suggesting that business success in 2010 may be something of a global lottery, depending on where a business is based.

The picture varies considerably depending on where a business is based. Four scenarios emerge.

The largest number of economies still sit in the bottom left quadrant with the lowest expectations about access to finance and with a perception that their lenders are the least supportive in the world. Many, like France, Greece, Ireland, Russia and Thailand are amongst the most generally pessimistic of the 36 economies surveyed this year. Perhaps more surprising is the presence of mainland China where businesses, despite being the 12th most optimistic in the 2010 IBR optimism/pessimism index, still fall below the global average in terms of their expectations for access to finance in 2010.

At the other end of the scale, the top right quadrant shows economies where businesses expect finance to be more accessible than the global average and who believe they enjoy above average support from their lenders. Chile, India and the Philippines are the most confident, but a number of major economies have also moved into this quadrant since 2009 - including the US, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.

In the top left quadrant, Japan, Poland, Malaysia and Spain believe their prospects for raising finance are low despite having supportive lenders and it is no coincidence that the IMF's official GDP growth forecasts for all these countries are below 3%, the global average for 2010.

Businesses from many countries in the bottom right quadrant (such as Armenia, Brazil, Finland and Turkey) have historically taken this position so despite their continuing belief that their lenders are unsupportive, they are without exception more optimistic that access to finance will significantly improve in 2010.