Corporate debt is the portion of non-financial companies’ outstanding financial obligations captured in the national accounts. It is recorded using end-period market prices and includes borrowing, liabilities in the form of deposits, issued debt instruments, and reserves associated with employer-sponsored direct pension arrangements. The quarterly estimate may be narrower than the annual estimate because some lending between non-financial entities and lending from banks outside the euro area may be omitted from the quarterly dataset.
Source: European Central Bank (ECB) (source). This glossary entry is an independently worded adaptation of the cited information.