Greek Accounting Standards and Debt Covenants. Changes in Contracting

Businesses, organizations, and even more governments are strongly related with information provided by accounting in order for CEO’s or managers and even more members of parliament to make decisions. Financial statements which contain multiple criteria, and how managers or shareholders treat them influence the decisionmaking of organizations and all types of businesses, public and private. Auditing financial statements ensures their reliability and validity. Both lenders and borrowers must choose the right set of debt covenants to minimize risk from their respective perspectives. It is critical to use and select debt covenants in relation to the side of interest. For instance, in past decades, financial covenants based on balance sheet variables are more likely in debt contracting. Nowadays, the trend of choosing a batch of covenants in contracting changed. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between changing the Greek direction and accounting standard setting. Greek accounting standards are moving away from “old-fashioned” book- and record-keeping standards. This was a great change that took place in 2015, and since then, new notions of accounting practice have been introduced. Fair value, net realizable value, present value, cash equivalents, and useful economic life are some concepts that were first used in accounting the process in Greek economy. Changes were massive and everyone involved with accounting, financial statements, and the way they were introduced should change the way they are analyzed. We hypothesized that this significant shift in accounting standard setting reduces the value of analyzing balance sheets in debt contracting. Since 2015, balance sheet-based covenants started to vanish, especially from private debt contracting. We tried to correlate borrowers and their likelihood in using balance sheet-based covenants. The correlation between the change in accounting standard setting and the concurrent change in trend of choosing accounting-based covenants in debt contracting is being investigated. The results are consistent with our hypothesis. A mechanism that separates multiple covenants and correlates them with significant debt characteristics will be an innovative tool for managers and credit institutions, as well as a more definite way of auditing, for instance, by digitalizing it, which will be a great tool for everyone involved in businesses. Keywords: accounting-based covenants, debt contracting, Greek accounting standard

Λογαριθμική ανισότητα Brunn-Minkowski και το λογαριθμικό πρόβλημα Minkowski

Η θεωρία Brunn-Minkowski βασίζεται στη σύνδεση του αθροίσματος Minkowski κυρτών σωμάτων με τον όγκο. Κεντρικό ρόλο σε αυτή τη θεωρία έχουν η ανισότητα Brunn-Minkowski και οι μεικτοί όγκοι του Minkowski. Η αντικατάσταση του αθροίσματος Minkowski από άλλου τύπου αθροίσματα δημιουργεί σε όλη τη θεωρία νέα ερωτήματα όπως: νέου τύπου ανισότητες, προβλήματα ύπαρξης, μοναδικότητας και χαρακτηρισμού μέτρων με γεωμετρική σημασία. Στο πρώτο μέρος της εργασίας μελετάμε το ερώτημα αν για την κλάση των συμμετρικών κυρτών σωμάτων ισχύει μια ισχυρότερη ανισότητα τύπου Brunn-Minkowski, γνωστή ως λογαριθμική ανισότητα Brunn-Minkowski. Περιγράφουμε τις αποδείξεις των μέχρι τώρα γνωστών αποτελεσμάτων γι’ αυτό το πρόβλημα. Στο δεύτερο μέρος της εργασίας μελετάμε ένα «πρόβλημα Minkowski». Με τον όρο αυτό αναφέρεται κανείς γενικά σε προβλήματα χαρακτηρισμού μέτρων πάνω στην σφαίρα τα οποία προέρχονται από κυρτά σώματα. Το πρόβλημα που μελετάμε είναι να βρεθούν ικανές και αναγκαίες συνθήκες για ένα πεπερασμένο μέτρο Borel πάνω στη σφαίρα του n-διάστατου Ευκλείδειου χώρου έτσι ώστε να είναι το cone-volume μέτρο ενός κυρτού σώματος. Στην περίπτωση που το μέτρο είναι άρτιο, οι Boroczky, Lutwak, Yang και Ζhang απέδειξαν ότι η κρίσιμη συνθήκη σχετίζεται με τη συγκέντρωση του μέτρου στις σφαίρες υποχώρων μικρότερης διάστασης.n this Thesis we study two open problems from the Brunn-Minkowski theory. The main theme is the interplay between vector addition and volume of convex bodies in Euclidean space. In the first part of the Thesis, we study the question whether the logarithmic Brunn-Minkowski inequality, a stronger inequality than the classical Brunn-Minkowski inequality, holds true for the class of the symmetric convex bodies. We present the known, up to now, results and partial answers to this question. In the second part of the Thesis, we study the Minkowski problem for the cone-volume measure. The question is to give necessary and sufficient conditions for a Borel measure on the sphere so that it is the cone-volume measure of a convex body. We present the answer to this question in the symmetric case. The crucial condition is related to the concentration of measure on spheres of subspaces of lower dimension

Novel foods and food ingredients: what is the mission of scientists and technologists?

The situation concerning world food production is changing dramatically. On the one hand, the world population is expected to grow still further, reaching about 8 billion peo- ple in the middle of the 21st century. Novel phenomena, such as ageing of the human population and excess weight in developing countries pose new nutrition problems. Food scares, which were enhanced by recent BSE and tox- icological outbreaks, hinder the applicability of some solu- tions. Under these conditions, scientists and technologists should participate actively in the tasks of informing the population as well as finding new ways to provide people with the optimal amount of nutritious food.(undefined

Characterization of the lactic acid bacteria in artisanal dairy products

In all, 4379 isolates from 35 products, including 24 artisanal cheeses, were surveyed with a view to identifying strains that could be used as starters in commercial dairy fermentations. Of the isolates, 38% were classified as Lactococcus, 17% as Enterococcus, 14% as Streptococcus thermophilus, 12% as mesophilic Lactobacillus, 10% as Leuconostoc and 9% as thermophilic Lactobacillus. Acid production by the isolates varied considerably. Of the 1582 isolates of Lactococcus and 482 isolates of mesophilic Lactobacillus tested, only 8 and 2% respectively produced sufficient acid to lower the pH of milk to < 5·3 in 6 h at 30 °C. In contrast, 53, 32 and 13% of Str. thermophilus, thermophilic Lactobacillus and Enterococcus isolates respectively reduced the pH to 5·3. These isolates were found only in some French, Italian and Greek cheeses. Bacteriocins were produced by 11% of the 2257 isolates tested and 26 of them produced broad-spectrum bacteriocins which inhibited at least eight of the ten target strains used, which included lactic acid bacteria, clostridia and Listeria innocua. The most proteolytic of the 2469 isolates tested were Str. thermophilus from Fontina cheese followed by Enterococcus from Fiore Sardo and Toma cheese and thermophilic Lactobacillus from all sources. Exopolysaccharides were produced by 5·3% of the 2224 isolates tested.The European Union is thanked for partly financing this project under ECLAIR contract CT-91-0064.Peer Reviewe

Hydrogen Storage Materials for Mobile and Stationary Applications: Current State of the Art

One of the limitations to the widespread use of hydrogen as an energy carrier is its storage in a safe and compact form. Herein, recent developments in effective high-capacity hydrogen storage materials are reviewed, with a special emphasis on light compounds, including those based on organic porous structures, boron, nitrogen, and aluminum. These elements and their related compounds hold the promise of high, reversible, and practical hydrogen storage capacity for mobile applications, including vehicles and portable power equipment, but also for the large scale and distributed storage of energy for stationary applications. Current understanding of the fundamental principles that govern the interaction of hydrogen with these light compounds is summarized, as well as basic strategies to meet practical targets of hydrogen uptake and release. The limitation of these strategies and current understanding is also discussed and new directions proposed