From this point of view, as you know Banque de France has paid particular attention to the continuation of the BACH database, since we were chosen to run it, two years ago, for the common interest of the ECCBSO members and beyond. We are committed to keeping it functioning properly, and encourage all initiatives to exploit all those interesting series of aggregated ratios. Among the numerous researches that have been made with these data, I would like to refer to the paper published by two economists from the ECB, Andra Buca and Philip Vermeulen, last February, concerning “corporate investment and bankdependant borrowers during the recent financial crisis”. Here also at the Banque de France, we publish several articles in our Bulletin extracting valuable piece of information in the BACH data base. Concerning your so-called WG 3, which focuses on IASB methodology and more generally monitoring of listed groups, Banque de France is interested in the new cooperation started last year with Eurostat. It will help to identify more precisely European groups’ structure and especially cross-border groups. But I understand that this TF is involved in many other topics, of which works on a dedicated data base (ERICA) which can deliver interesting results. There is a lot of work behind this and we can only hope to see those valuable contributions to be well promoted.
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