Profitability of Business Entities Settled in Selected Countries of the Eurozone Periphery

Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain can be defined as Eurozone periphery countries due to their specifics being rooted in policy systems and lagging behind in economic performance when compared with EU-15 countries. The objective of this paper is to provide an initial exploration of the similar and dissimilar business aspects´ development within observed Greek and Irish entities´ economic performance in different industries, using two-dimensional visualisation in the context of the recent world financial and economic crisis. This visualisation approach using classical correspondence analysis helps to reveal broader associations, which could influence the economic status of observed business units. Greek and Irish businesses which have been considered to be specifically, strongly and negatively influenced by the world economic downturn were observed. A sample of companies’ corporate financial statements´ data were employed. The sample of entities was set up according to the criterion of profitability of the whole involved capital development, regardless of its nature during the time period of the years 2008 – 2010, i. e. according to either the continual increase or decrease of the aforementioned indicator. Consequently, there were explored other attributes of assorted businesses, namely economic size and industry classification as the components for cross-tabular data sets. Authors revealed associations among different industries and size categories of Greek and Irish businesses using classical correspondence analysis.