About us

Grant Thornton International started a major annual research survey into the attitudes and expectations of small and medium-sized businesses in 1992 called the European Business Survey (EBS). In 2003 the research project was widened to an international perspective covering medium-sized businesses and renamed the International Business Owners Survey (IBOS).

This year, the name of the survey has changed from IBOS to the International Business Report (IBR). The IBR survey covers over 7200 privately held businesses in 32 countries and draws upon 15 years of trend data for original EBS participants and 5 years for original IBOS countries. New entrants this year are Armenia and Brazil taking the global and EU gross domestic product (GDP) coverage to 81% and 86% respectively.

Participating Countries
Detailed below are the 32 participating countries in IBR 2007:

Americas	Asia Pacific	Europe, Middle East and Africa
Argentina	Australia	Armenia
Brazil	China	Botswana
Canada	Hong Kong	France
Mexico	India	Germany
United States	Japan	Greece
	Malaysia	Ireland
	New Zealand	Italy
	Philippines	Luxembourg
	Singapore	The Netherlands
	Taiwan	Poland
	Thailand	Russia
		South Africa
		Spain
		Sweden
		Turkey
		United Kingdom

Target respondent

The type of business targeted for IBR are defined as medium to large privately held businesses. The definition of a medium to large business is determined by government descriptions in terms of number of employees, for example a medium to large sized business in the EU would typically have between 50-499 employees.

Coverage

IBR 2007 will deliver a series of press releases and reports based on specific business issues, some of which are detailed below:

Wednesday 10 January 2007 - Optimism/Pessimism

Wednesday 7 February 2007 - Emerging Markets - BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China)

Thursday 8 March 2007 - Women in Business

Wednesday 28 March 2007 - Super Growth Index

Wednesday 25 April 2007 - Energy and Environment

Wednesday 16 May 2007 - Business Stress

Wednesday 13 June 2007 - Global Report

For more information on the IBR 2007 methodology, please click here