From January to the end of October, company bankruptcies increased by 35 percent compared to the same period last year. In total, about 5,500 companies went bankrupt, which is an increase of 1,400, as collection agency Creditreform announced on Monday.
If you look at the pre-crisis figures from 2018 to 2019, 8 percent more companies went bankrupt. During the Corona crisis, the number of bankruptcies also dropped significantly due to comprehensive relief measures.
The study’s authors suspect that some of the now-bankrupt companies were already in distress before the crisis and were artificially kept alive with government assistance through the crisis. This rate was particularly high in the IT, financial and insurance services, and mechanical engineering sectors. Here, too, the number of bankruptcies was above the average.
Central Switzerland most affected
The number of company bankruptcies increased the most in the cantons of Zug (+63.1%), Lucerne (+47.3%) and Schwyz (+32.6%). However, Valais (21.4%), Graubünden (-23.0%), Geneva (-17.0%) and St. Gallen (-12.4%) also had significantly less bankruptcy cantons. Small cantons are not taken into account, as the smallest changes here result in large percentage fluctuations.
For the year as a whole, Creditreform expects a new high for bankruptcies. More than 6,600 companies are said to be unable to survive the leap year. In contrast, around 5,100 companies filed for bankruptcy in 2021.
The number of new company registrations in the first ten months is slightly below the previous year’s (-1.2%). As a whole, Creditreform expects around 49,000 new companies to be registered, a decrease of about 4 percent from the previous year. (SDA)