24.3.2015 Official Journal of the European Union L 78/1 II (Non-legislative acts) REGULATIONS COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION (EU) 2015/488 of 4 September 2014 amending Delegated Regulation (EU) No 241/2014 as regards own funds requirements for firms based on fixed overheads (Text with EEA relevance) THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Having regard to Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 on prudential requirements for credit institutions and investment firms and amending Regulation (EU) No 648/2012 ('), and in particular the third subparagraph of Article 97(4) thereof, Whereas: (1) Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 establishes, among other matters, prudential requirements for investment firms in order to ensure that investment firms are safe and sound and comply at all times with the own funds requirements. Own funds requirements established by that Regulation aim to ensure that risks stemming from business activities are covered by a sufficient amount of own funds. According to Article 97 of Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 firms (i.e. investment firms and entities referred to in point (2)(c) of Article 4(1)) can use an alternative method based on fixed costs to calculate the total risk exposure. It is therefore necessary to establish the methodology for calculating fixed overheads and the list of items that would be included in the calculations in order to have a common approach in all Member States. (2)  In order to ensure that firms are able to organise an orderly winding down or restructuring of their activities, they should hold sufficient financial resources to withstand operational expenses over an appropriate period of time. During the winding down or restructuring, a firm still needs to continue its business and be able to absorb losses which are not matched by a sufficient volume of profits, to protect investors. While some costs (such as staff bonuses) may decrease other costs (such as legal expenses) may increase. Considering that not all firms use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and in order to avoid regulatory arbitrage, it is essential to follow a prudent approach for calculating own funds for firms, whereby changes to the accounting framework are automatically taken into account and cannot be arbitraged by changing the accounting categorisation. In order to more adequately reflect the effect of the variable expenses in the own funds, rules on the own funds of firms should be based on an approach whereby variable costs are deducted from total expenses. (3)  Given that firms make use of tied agents and the business carried out through tied agents exposes those firms to risks in the same manner as the business carried out by the firms themselves, appropriate rules on the own funds requirements for firms based on fixed overheads should provide for the inclusion of costs relating to tied agents to reflect those risks. Nevertheless, given that costs related to tied agents have some element of variability but cannot be considered a fully variable cost item but it would be disproportionate to include the full amount of the costs related to tied agents to the own funds requirements, these rules should provide for the inclusion only of a () OJL176,27.6.2013,p. 1.