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As many company bankruptcies as have not been in ten years
Expensive energy, reserved consumers, bureaucratic loads: More and more companies are giving up. After all, the latest official bankruptcy figures give some hope.
The company bankruptcies in Germany are going up to the sudden: 11,900 companies will have filed for bankruptcy by the Creditreform information agency by the end of the first half of the year. That would be 9.4 percent more than in the first six months of 2024.
Although the growth has weakened significantly – the value of the first half of 2024 was 28.5 percent above the same period – but the number of corporate bankruptcies has reached the highest level since 2015. At that time, Creditreform counted 11,530 company bankruptcies from January to the end of June.
“Companies are fighting with weak demand, increasing costs and persistent uncertainty,” explains the head of Creditreform Economic Research, Patrik-Ludwig Hantzsch. “In particular, the financial reserves disappear, loans are no longer extended and more and more companies are getting into serious difficulties.”
Particularly many bankruptcies in the service industry
In the first half of the company in the processing business (plus 17.5 percent to 940 cases) and in retail (plus 13.8 percent to 2,220 cases), the information agency registers a significant increase in the company bankruptcy in the first half of the company). Among other things, the industry is creating increased raw material and energy costs, retailers feel the retention of buying many consumers in view of the permanent crises and online competition.
With almost 7,000 cases, the largest proportion of bankruptcies is eliminated in the service sector, which includes, for example, gastronomy.
The damage caused by company bankruptcies in the first half of 2025 added up to an estimated 33.4 billion euros – after 29.7 billion euros a year earlier. The number of endangered jobs has also increased as a result of large insolvencies: 141,000 employees are affected, and in the first half of 2024 there were still 133,000.
Consumer covenants are also increasing significantly
Private households are also more in financial need: consumer solvents climbed 6.6 percent to 37,700 cases in the first half of the year. “The persistently high bankruptcy reactions are increasingly triggering chain reactions. The number of cases among private individuals has been increasing continuously for three years,” Hantzsch arranges. “The strongly increased cost of living and job losses, especially in industry, put a lot of households under pressure.”
Experts expect rising bankruptcy figures for the full year
For the first quarter of 2025, the local courts reported 5,891 corporate bankruptcies requested by the Federal Statistical Office and thus 13.1 percent more than a year earlier.
Various credit agencies expect more company bankruptcies than 2024 for the year as a whole. According to official figures last year, a maximum of 21,812 cases had been registered since 2015. The increase was expected after state support from Corona pandemic had expired. In addition, high energy prices, bureaucracy and political uncertainty burden companies.
The most recent figures of the Wiesbaden statisticians give at least hope that the wave of bankruptcies could be broken: for the first time since March 2023, there were less registered insolvency proceedings in a month than a year earlier, as the Federal Statistical Office announced on the basis of preliminary data for May.
dpa
Source: Stern
