Other economic data

Corporate balance sheet statistics

The Bundesbank has been evaluating individual financial statements of non-financial enterprises for statistical purposes since 1966. More information on the underlying data is provided in the overview.

The figures of the corporate balance sheet statistics are used for the analysis of the income, assets and financing situation of the German corporate sector and are made available on a regular basis. Explanatory notes and links to the publications are available here.

The annual accounts data are also used for comparative international analyses. In this context, the Bundesbank is a member of the European Committee of Central Balance Sheet Data Offices, whose purpose is to improve cooperation in Europe in the area of corporate data.

Overview

For the calculation of corporate balance sheet statistics, the Bundesbank uses financial statements of non-financial corporations, starting with the financial year 1997, which are stored in the Financial Statements Data Pool.

This is a voluntary facility of the Bundesbank in cooperation with institutions of the banking industry as well as other institutions with extensive financial statements data. The purpose of this facility is to bring together – in an anonymised form – the data of the institutions. In addition, the data pool is supplemented by financial statements which the Bundesbank obtains in connection with its refinancing operations as well as publicly accessible data from credit rating agencies. For the financial years prior to 1997, the financial statements submitted in the context of refinancing operations are the sole source of data for evaluations.

The Financial Statements Data Pool gives the Bundesbank access to over 100,000 financial statements of German companies per year for its evaluations. Measured in terms of turnover from the Federal Statistical Office's turnover tax statistics, the corporations recorded in the data pool represent about two-thirds of the business activity of German firms outside of the financial sector.

Explanatory notes on the publications

The figures of the corporate balance sheet statistics are made available in numerous publications.

Every year, as part of its Monthly Reports, the Bundesbank publishes a study with extrapolated results on German enterprises' profitability and financing, differentiated according to economic sector as well as an up-to-date estimation of the results for all enterprises.

Special Statistical Publication 5 contains a corresponding time series with extrapolated results from 1997. This publication also contains explanatory notes on the content of the Financial Statements Data Pool as well as on the methodology of the extrapolation procedure, which is based on the Federal Statistical Office's turnover tax statistics. An earlier time series with figures from 1971 to 1998 for West Germany can be requested by sending an e-mail to presse-information@bundesbank.de.

In addition, the Bundesbank annually publishes Special Statistical Publication 6 with ratios from financial statements of German enterprises. The ratios in this publication have not been extrapolated and are differentiated by sector, size and legal form, thus being particularly useful for a comparison of the different sectors with regard to the ratios of individual enterprises.

Moreover, at irregular intervals, the Bundesbank publishes special analyses of specific issues regarding the income, assets and financing situation of small and medium-sized enterprises in its Monthly Reports.

European Committee of Central Balance Sheet Data Offices

The European Committee of Central Balance Sheet Data Offices (ECCBSO) is a voluntary association of European central banks, statistical offices and similar institutions, which have sizeable datasets of the financial statements of non-financial enterprises. The purpose of this association is to exchange views in order to improve the analysis of financial statements, particularly for statistical purposes and for assessing the creditworthiness of enterprises. For these purposes, the central banks and statistical offices in the ECCBSO statistically evaluate the financial information available using a formally harmonised balance sheet layout based on the Fourth Council Directive (78/660/EEC). In particular, the harmonisation ensures the use of standard designations for the published financial statement items, thus improving the comparability of the national evaluations results. However, comparative analyses of different countries are still relatively difficult, because there remain substantial differences in the accounting practices between the individual countries due to different structural, institutional and legal frameworks.

Results of the various ECCBSO working groups:

On the homepage of the Banque de France, the ECCBSO provides the publicly accessible database BACH-ESD being a merged version of the databases BACH (Bank for the Accounts of Companies Harmonised) and ESD (European Sectoral references Database) which were hosted separately until June 2010. Based on a harmonised accounting scheme, the database contains ratios of financial statements of non-financial corporations in several European countries in the form of weighted means and quartiles. The figures are grouped by country, size and sector of economic activity.

Moreover, the publications of the ECCBSO study group analyse questions relating to corporate finance and capital structure in selected European countries with different points of emphasis. The most recent study, for example, deals with the "net worth at risk" concept, a risk-orientated approach to analysing equity as a buffer for offsetting possible losses.

Publications

Monthly Report articles

Title	Date	Size
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2010	2012-01-24	567 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2009	2010-12-13	216 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2008	2010-01-18	233 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2007	2009-01-19	345 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2006	2007-12-17	371 KB
The economic situation of small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany since 1997	2006-12-18	337 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing in 2004	2006-06-26	222 KB
German enterprises' profitability and financing – an analysis based on a new dataset	2005-10-21	373 KB

Special Statistical Publication 5

Title	Date	Size
Extrapolated data from financial statements of German enterprises from 1997 to 2007 (German only)	2009-11	1,04 MB

As of July 2011: For extrapolated data from financial statements of German enterprises from 1997 to 2009 as an Excel file, click here.

Special Statistical Publication 6

Title	Date	Size
Ratios from financial statements of German enterprises 2004 to 2005	2008-02	1,9 MB
Ratios from financial statements of German enterprises 2003 to 2004	2007-01	2,9 MB
Ratios from financial statements of German enterprises 2002 to 2003	2005-12	619 KB
Ratios from financial statements of German enterprises 2000 to 2002	2004-11	1 MB

As of March 2011: Excel files containing preliminary data for 2008 to 2009 and results for previous years are available here.

Publications within the ECCBSO framework

Title	Date	Size
Net Worth at Risk - European Committee of Central Balance Sheet Data Offices (Ed.: Banque de France)	2005-08	2,0 MB