Critical situations in the operations of companies, both evitable and inevitable, usually have a certain pattern and development trend but are different as to the duration, sector or region. Many of them ask for some legal procedure, the most critical ones lead to a bankruptcy process. The purpose of the research is the rapid increase in number of bankruptcies in Slovakia in recent years. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the bankruptcy as a type of critical situation in Slovak companies and specify it according to the regional and sectoral perspective, including economic conditions prior to a bankruptcy. The paper utilizes secondary data obtained from available databases. The initial analysis is focused on the group of all companies entering the bankruptcy process in the period from 2009 until 2019. Firstly, the full sample is considered, regardless of the legal form and data and the outcome of the analysis is used for mapping of industrial and regional intensity of bankruptcies. The second stage of the research is focused on research sample after the irrelevant subjects were ousted from it. As irrelevant subjects we consider sole traders without business data and companies with doubtful data or unclear bankruptcy start. Through the available indicators are identified the early warning signals from the financial perspective. Indicators are split into two categories – absolute and relative ones and they are investigated three, two and one years before the start of bankruptcy. Four hypotheses were formulated before the research, the length of bankruptcy process was quantified and specified for SK NACE sectors and regions. The paper presents the results of empirical analysis, which showed that the dynamic change in number of bankruptcies was brought with significant amending of bankruptcy legislation. The longest bankruptcy process is found in accommodation and food services (4 years), while IT companies generally went bankrupt within a year. The economic situation in bankrupting companies significantly worsen in case of sales and equity (the number of companies with negative equity doubled), development of profit/loss fluctuate a bit due to the sale of assets which helped in later stages. There is no statistically significant difference in the length of bankruptcy among the industries and regions. In case of legislative rules the lower cash ratio seems to be the dominant reason while companies enter the bankruptcy. The research results can be useful for further and more detailed analysis, mostly in connection with bankruptcy development (what happen when bankruptcy started) and liabilities compensation and through non-financial bankruptcy factors in individual industries.

A B S T R A C T Clusters became an integral part of regional policies intended to build and strengthen competitive advantages within specifically identified geographical areas. They are still considered crucial for economic development and employment, although their orientation has slightly changed as the distance and geographical boundaries lost their importance. This article analyses crucial regional data that indicates potentially beneficial economic concentrations as an assumption for the preparation of prospective clusters in Slovakia. Potential clusters were identified based on significant employment concentrations of particular regional industries that appear extraordinary when compared with national employment and the dynamic development within the selected time frame. Prospective clusters were identified, and opportunities of their development were described, including the harmonisation with the current regional and urban strategy. Analysing absolute and relative quantities in employment, sections and divisions of SK NACE were used for the proper identification of industries. The location quotient served as a tool for the spatial concentration of employment in the Banská Bystrica region, the threshold value for the selection of cluster candidates was set to 2. The shift-share analysis was used for the identification of long-term changes in employment, and 10% of the most dynamic industries were presented at the level of divisions once and then, at the level of sections of SK NACE. Forestry and logging, the manufacture of wood products and the manufacture of basic metals were confirmed by both methods as significant concentrations. The result partially corresponded with the previously active and currently inactive cluster in Banská Bystrica, which was focused on mechanical engineering, still significant when considering numbers of companies and employees as well as sales. Forestry was the most concentrated industry, while the wholesale and retail trades were the most dynamic. Forestry, logging and manufacture of wood products might be strongly interlinked with the current entrepreneurial and social strategy of self-governing regions that is still at the stage of potential cluster identification and fitting to its priorities. The article assumed basic quantitative methods utilised for the identification of prospective clusters. It confirmed the practicality of their application, the gravity of data processing and also certain possible limitations due to the extraordinary focus on the employment concentration. According to the analysis and gained results, the former cluster in the Banská Bystrica region was confirmed as the potentially significant actor in the regional policy (although, currently, having no industrial or public interest) and the new cluster candidates were identified. Outcomes indicated the need to continue the research with a more detailed examination of qualitative aspects that could complete the effort by focusing on clusters not only having higher employment statistics but also the supp...

The main aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence about profit-shifting to selected tax havens by Slovak companies. This contribution focused on the very rare evidence of use of tax havens by Slovak companies not only in the field of corporate income tax, but also in selected areas of profitability. Two sources of data were used. Lists of Slovak companies with tax haven links were provided by the company, Bisnode, and financial statements of investigated companies were gained from the Finstat database. Based on the available data, the investigated period was between 2008 and 2016. We statistically tested selected indicators (ETR, taxes per assets, ROE, ROA, and ROS) of Slovak companies with direct ownership links to tax havens compared to their counterparts. Our findings suggest that Slovak companies with an ownership link to tax havens pay significantly lower taxes compared to companies without ownership links to tax havens during the period monitored. The aggressive tax planning was not only confirmed by the significantly lower reported values of ETR and taxes per assets, but also by the lower values of ROA. On the one side, Slovak companies with ownership links to midshore tax havens had the highest values of ROE, ROA, and ROS, but on the other side, these Slovak companies reported the highest ETR among the appointed categories (onshore, midshore, and offshore). The lowest taxes paid per unit of total assets were found in Slovak companies with ownership links to onshore tax havens. The analysis was supplemented by the changes of the selected indicators before and after obtaining an ownership link to a tax haven.

The article analyzes selected success factors of crowdfunding campaigns in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. As these countries are small in size with limited absorption capacity of crowdfunding markets, we assume that regional projects might be different as to the type, budget and area of implementation than those on international portals. The basic hypotheses are proposed, coming out from existing theories and previous results of research, tested by parametric tests. The methodology combines utilization of several methodsterm frequency, trend analysis, quantitative and causal analysis. The results indicate that many projects are not providing important information about their idea (also in form of video spot, connection with social networks and own website), however, still quite large part of them is successful. The analysis also testifies that the most successful crowdfunding campaigns are those oriented on the blogs, travel, community, education and science

No abstract