National economy Number of company bankruptcies continues to rise

The number of company bankruptcies rose in August. At the same time, the number of new company registrations in the commercial register fell.

Keystone-SDA

03.09.2024, 08:45

SDA

Overall, the number of company liquidations increased by 7.0 percent to 2,224 in August 2024 compared to the same month last year, as the creditors' association Creditreform announced on Tuesday. The number of pure corporate insolvencies shot up by 19.1 percent.

Deletions also rose in the first eight months of the current year, namely by 6.7 percent to a total of 21,866. Pure bankruptcies climbed by 15.2 percent in this period.

At the same time, new registrations fell by 3.4 percent to 3557 companies in August. In August, the vacation mood seems to have outweighed the entrepreneurial spirit, Creditreform wrote. So far this year, 35,210 companies or 2.0% more have been founded than in the same period in 2023.

For 2024 as a whole, the association expects an overall increase of 5.4% to 32,400 deletions, while new registrations are likely to rise by 3.2% to 53,300. This leaves a net growth in new companies of 20,900, which would be virtually the same as the previous year.

Further increase in private insolvencies

There was also a massive increase in personal insolvencies of living persons in the first eight months, with an increase of almost 30 percent. In contrast, there was a comparatively small increase of 4.5 percent in probate (bankruptcies decreed after the death of a person). However, they still account for the majority of the total of 6004 personal bankruptcies.

Looking at a longer period of two decades, the number of business start-ups has increased significantly, Creditreform continued. In 2004, for example, the figures for the year as a whole were similar to those now recorded after just eight months.

This underlines both the high willingness to innovate and the entrepreneurial spirit. However, 20 years ago only about half of the companies were deleted from the commercial register compared to the current year.