WORKING GROUPS

The BACH -ESD Working Group is in charge of developing and improving two European statistical databases:  the BACH database or Bank for Accounts of Companies Harmonized, and the BACH-ESD database or European Sectoral References database.

The BACH database was built up in 1987 by the ECCBSO in collaboration with the European Commission. It provides comparable aggregated data from annual accounts (major items of the balance sheet, profit and loss account and notes) of non-financial incorporated companies from nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain).  During the last decades, significant improvements have been made in to the database in order to continuously improve the comparability of the national datasets, despite the lack of   harmonization in the national accounting and reporting standards (e.g. the provision of aggregated data based on the most recent sectoral classifications, the disclosure of coverage rates, the inclusion of comprehensive and harmonized descriptions of the national datasets…).

The BACH-ESD database provides sectoral statistics (quartiles and weighted average) for a set of 28 financial ratios from non-financial incorporated companies belonging to eight European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain).  They are mainly intended for credit and financial institutions for their credit risk analysis, but can also be used as benchmarks in order to compare the financial structure and performance of single firms with their respective sectoral and size aggregates.

The III Working Group primarily focuses on the impact of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), issued by the IASB, on the accountancy of non financial corporations and their effects on the European central balance sheet data offices´ databases and questionnaires, trying to assess both potential opportunities and risks. To that end, the group has developed IFRS-compliant standard formats (using for that purpose the IFRS Taxonomy defined by the  IFRS Foundation XBRL Team) and created European Consolidated Accounts databases (ERICA 1 and 2).

The Risk Assessment Working Group was set up in 1987 in order to draw up the so called White Paper on corporate analysis in Europe and to draft reports on the analysis of stocks and flows conducted in the various central balance-sheet data offices. The group then expanded its project and, since 1999, its members have been working in cooperation with the related divisions of the European Central Bank, homogenising the  risk analysis carried out by Central Banks.These analyses mainly concern the corporations whose liabilities have been taken as collateral in monetary policy operations. The group has also carried out research on default prediction models and, jointly with the ECAF Task Force, has developed studies on technical details of the future ECAF (European Credit Assessment Framework).

The Study Group focuses mainly on the analysis of equity capitalization in an international setting.  It has already produced three studies. The most recent one deals with Net Worth at Risk (NWaR), which was published in August 2005. NWaR is dealing with the minimum capital needed by a company in order  to absorb potential losses for/during a period of two years of crises.

Currently, the group is doing supplemental research on NWaR, refining the concept as well as taken into consideration aspects of illiquidity resulting in a figure named Cash Flow at Risk. Current members of the group are representatives from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain.