 Trend in the financial structure and results of firms in 2008David Vivet
Economic Review, 2009, issue iv, 59-81 Abstract: The article looks at the financial situation of non-financial corporations in Belgium over the period running from 1 January to 31 December 2008. Because of the contrasting economic trends during that period, the analysis is somewhat blurred. Nevertheless, the data collected still give a good idea of the resistance capacity of firms at the beginning of the recession. For the year 2008 as a whole, growth of the total value added generated by Belgian non-financial corporations amounted to 1.8 p.c. (in current prices), well down on previous years. Meanwhile, operating costs grew more quickly than value added, resulting in a drop in operating profit for the first time since 2001. As far as the financial position of firms is concerned, there was a widespread decline in profitability and repayment ability in 2008, due to the economic downturn. On the other hand, solvency ratios continued to rise as a result of newly-invested capital. Finally, a distribution analysis shows that a large proportion of firms are in an unfavourable situation and that the dispersion of ratios has widened over the last ten years. Keywords: firms’ results; financial structure; sectoral analysis; distribution analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbb:ecrart:y:2009:m:december:i:iv:p:59-81 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Economic Review from National Bank of Belgium Contact information at EDIRC. |
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