Germany is witnessing the highest bankruptcy rate since 2009

The number of corporate bankruptcies in Germany rose last year for the first time since the 2009 global financial crisis.

The Federal Statistical Office announced at its headquarters in Wiesbaden, on Friday, that the competent courts recorded 14,590 bankruptcies of companies last year, an increase of 4.3% compared to 2021.

During the period from March 2020 to May 2021, the obligation to submit an insolvency application was suspended in whole or in part for heavily indebted companies, which prevented a wave of bankruptcies during the covid-19 pandemic.

Experts expected an increase in corporate bankruptcies after the expiry of these exceptions.

However, experts don’t assess this increase as a wave of bankruptcies, even if it seems likely that there will be a moderate increase in bankruptcies during the current year due to the difficult economic environment.

According to the German Bureau of Statistics, there was an increase in corporate bankruptcies during the financial crisis in 2009, and after that year the number of cases decreased steadily year on year.

In February of this year, the number of corporate bankruptcies increased after declining at the beginning of the year.

According to the interim data of the Statistics Bureau, the number of bankruptcy applications increased by 10.8% compared to the previous month.

In January, cases decreased by 3.2% compared to the previous month.

According to the data, the procedures are not included in the statistics until after the issuance of the first decision by the competent court.

In many cases, the decision is issued approximately three months after filing the bankruptcy application.