A foreign direct investment (FDI) rebound will be slow at best and the focus of corporate investments is increasingly on developing markets, according to the 2011 A.T. Kearney Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index, a regular measure of senior executive sentiment at the world's largest companies. 

While 55 percent of corporate investors surveyed said their FDI budgets had returned to the levels they were prior to the economic crisis, more than one-fifth said they don't expect their FDI to return to pre-crisis levels until 2014 or later.

"While volumes were nowhere near their highs of the mid-2000s, these modest gains signal the beginnings of cautious optimism on the part of investors. But with prospects for near-term recovery still shaky and debt crises looming large, this modest optimism could quickly revert to retrenchment," notes Paul A. Laudicina, managing officer and chairman of A.T. Kearney.

The world's developing economies comprise more than one-half of the Index's top 25 countries, indicating that flows to these regions will accelerate as investment picks back up.

According to the survey, investors are increasingly turning to the developing world more for its large and rapidly growing consumer markets than for its lower-cost labor. China remains the top-ranked destination by foreign investors, a title it has held since 2002, followed by India and Brazil.

The United States fell to fourth place from second, with its debt gridlock weighing heavily on investor sentiment.