Bureau van Dijk is a major publisher of

business information Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

, and specialises in private company data combined with software for searching and analysing companies. It is a Moody's Analytics company. Orbis is Bureau van Dijk's flagship company database. On 15 May 2017 it was announced that

Moody's Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides internationa ...

entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bureau van Dijk, which completed in August 2017.

Overview

Bureau van Dijk's product range combines data from regulatory and other sources, including 160 information providers, with software to allow users to manipulate data for a range of research needs and applications. Unlike other providers of content, Bureau van Dijk reveals their sources and shows the source data – allowing users to create their own analytics and predictive analysis based on underlying primary data and reporting. The majority of staff focus on sales, marketing and customer support in offices in: Amsterdam, Beijing, Bratislava, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Copenhagen, Dubai, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Manchester, Mexico City, Milan, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, São Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo, Vienna, Washington D.C. and Zurich. Bureau van Dijk's research team collects both global M&A data and intelligence around corporate ownership structures, and is based in Manchester, Brussels and Singapore. It also has a team of journalists writing news stories on deals and market rumours. Product management and software development are based in the Geneva and Brussels offices. The company has over 5,000 clients including banks, insurance companies, financial and consulting organisations, governments and research institutes. Bureau van Dijk claims to offer the most powerful comparable resource of information on private companies in the world. The company brand statement is "The Business of Certainty". The company regularly blogs content and white papers, offering free resources on compliance and other risk areas.

History

The origin of Bureau van Dijk dates back to the 1970s. Belgian businessman Marcel van Dijk established a company specialising in documentary and information systems, named "Bureau Marcel van Dijk". In 1972, its activities were further deployed in the two companies established in Paris and Brussels. In 1985, on the retirement of Marcel van Dijk, Professor Bernard van Ommeslaghe and Alain Liedts took over the company and extended its operations to include management consulting, auditing and IT support. In 1987, Bureau van Dijk took the pioneering role in Europe by launching a new activity: the design and dissemination on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both compute ...

(the precursor to Bureau van Dijk's online databases) of economic and financial databases with information on companies. In 1991, a second company, "Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing", was formed to assume responsibility for updating and expanding these databases, while the consulting division remained grouped within the company Bureau van Dijk Ingénieurs Conseils. The owners of Bureau van Dijk were private individuals who were also members of the management and board, and the company has since been sold. Candover acquired a 60% stake in Bureau van Dijk in 2004 after founder and chairman Bernard Van Ommeslaghe, who was 70, decided to sell part. The other 40% was then thought to be owned by the management. Bureau van Dijk was then sold to

Charterhouse Capital Partners Charterhouse Capital Partners is a London based private equity investment firm focused on investing in European mid-market companies valued between €200m and €1.5bn. The company targets investments across the services, healthcare, specialis ...

in July 2011, backed with 505 million euros of leveraged loans, including 365 million euros of senior loans and 140 million euros of mezzanine debt maturing in 2019. In July 2014,

EQT Partners EQT AB Group is a global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. , EQT's assets under management ...

purchased Bureau van Dijk from Charterhouse backed by an 845 million-euro equivalent leveraged loan financing. In early 2015, Swedish pension fund Sjätte AP-fonden (AP6) bought a 3% stake in Bureau van Dijk, through a direct co-investment. In May 2017,

Moody's Analytics Moody's Analytics is a subsidiary of Moody's Corporation established in 2007 to focus on non-rating activities, separate from Moody's Investors Service. It provides economic research regarding risk, performance and financial modeling, as well as ...

announced its intention to buy the company for 3 billion euros, which was completed in August 2017.

Products

Bureau van Dijk offers a range of products/databases which focus on corporate finance and

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

(M&A), transfer pricing, compliance and third party due diligence,

procurement Procurement is the method of discovering and agreeing to terms and purchasing goods, services, or other works from an external source, often with the use of a tendering or competitive bidding process. When a government agency buys goods or serv ...

and supplier risk,

credit risk A credit risk is risk of default on a debt that may arise from a borrower failing to make required payments. In the first resort, the risk is that of the lender and includes lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased ...

, academic research and business development. These products include:

Orbis

Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers Figure 3 Network of ownership flows between countries

Orbis is Bureau van Dijk's flagship company database. It contains information on companies across the world and focuses on private company information and also presenting companies in comparable formats. It has information on around 400 million companies from all countries. Bureau van Dijk sources the information from over 170 different providers and states that it adds value to this information as it standardises the data and links the sources together. A study by the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other bein ...

's CORPNET group published in 2017 in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are p ...

'' used the Orbis database to analyse over 98 million global corporate connections to investigate

tax haven A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or ...

s and

offshore financial centre An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy." "Offshore" does not refer ...

(OFCs); resulting in new classifications of Conduit and Sink OFCs.

Amadeus (transitioning to Orbis Europe)

Analyse Major Databases from European Sources (Amadeus) is a pan-European database containing financial information on over 24 million public and private companies.

Moody's BankFocus

BankFocus is a global database containing information on over 40,000 public and private banks.

Osiris

Osiris is a database of listed companies, banks and insurance companies around the world.

Orbis InsuranceFocus

Orbis Insurance Focus is a comprehensive database of detailed reports on public and private insurance companies around the world. It contains information on some 12,000 companies.

Zephyr

Zephyr is an information solution containing M&A,

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

and venture capital deals. As of January 2015, Zephyr has information on over 1.2 million deals and rumours.

EIU Dataservices

Bureau van Dijk also work with the

Economist Intelligence Unit The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, ...

to publish EIU DataServices – a range of economic products combined with advanced software. These include products such as EIU CountryData, EIU Country Risk Model, EIU Financial Services Indicators and Forecasts and EIU World Investment Service.

Country-specific databases

Bureau van Dijk publishes country-specific databases.

FACT

FACT is a credit risk framework made up of three main modules. Spreading and financial analysis, a risk rating engine and a credit workflow module. These can be used independently or combined for a complete end-to-end credit risk management solution.

PUBlizard

PUBlizard is a white-label cloud distribution platform for eBooks and documents enabling to build digital libraries. It will securely stream EPUB3 and PDF contents to subscribers via browser & mobile applications. PUBlizard is powering products for publishers, distributors, universities, libraries, book associations and information providers such as CourseSmart and Safari Books Online. 5(EDIT: outdated information; PUBlizard is not anymore a product of BVD)

Zephus

Zephus is Bureau van Dijk's M&A research subsidiary and is based in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...

. It is headed by Bureau van Dijk's head of M&A products, Lisa Wright. Researchers work on collating information on noteworthy deals and write M&A reports. The researchers work in over 30 languages and all relevant information is translated into English. Zephus also offers

bespoke The word ''bespoke'' () has evolved from a verb meaning 'to speak for something', to its contemporary usage as an adjective. Originally, the adjective ''bespoke'' described tailor-made suits and shoes. Later, it described anything commissioned t ...

research for the media.

References

External link

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