Germany: growth in the number of corporate and private bankruptcies continues. The crisis continues
According to preliminary data from the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis ), applications for standard bankruptcy proceedings in Germany increased by 3.3% in April 2025 compared to the same month in the previous year.
This increase is in the single digit percentage range, similar to what was observed in March 2025 (+5.7%). This data marks a change compared to the period from July 2024 to January 2025, in which double-digit increases were recorded compared to the previous year, but nevertheless we continue to see an increase in this data which shows the difficulty of the German economic system.
Here is the relevant graph from Destatis:
It is important to note that this data is only included in the statistics after the first bankruptcy court decision. Often, the effective date of the bankruptcy filing is approximately three months earlier. Insolvency statistics include only business cessations that occur through insolvency proceedings. They do not include closures due to other reasons or those that occurred before serious payment difficulties arose.
Around 30% of bankruptcy procedures in Germany are standard procedures, which mainly concern companies (around 55% of total standard procedures), but also economically active people such as company members and self-employed workers.
The frequency of failures is calculated based on the number of registered companies.
Significant increase in business bankruptcies in February 2025
However, if we break down the data by type of bankruptcy we have the most precise picture of the suffering of the German economic system: according to the definitive results, in February 2025 the German local courts recorded 2,068 cases of company bankruptcy, with an increase of 15.9% compared to February 2024 .
Estimates of creditors' claims arising from these bankruptcies amount to around 9.0 billion euros, a figure significantly higher than the approximately 4.1 billion euros recorded in February 2024.
Increased frequency of failures in the transport and logistics sector
As of February 2025, there were an average of 6.0 business failures per 10,000 companies in Germany. The hardest hit sector was transportation and warehousing, with 10.0 cases per 10,000 businesses. This is followed by economic services (such as temporary agencies) with 9.3 cases and the hospitality sector with 9.0 bankruptcies per 10,000 companies.
There is also growth in private bankruptcies
In February 2025, there were 6,075 private bankruptcies, marking an increase of 4.8% compared to February 2024.
In summary, preliminary and final data for the first few months of 2025 continues to show growth in the number of bankruptcies in Germany, both among companies and individuals, although the growth rate of standard insolvencies in April 2025 has returned to single digit percentages after a period of double-digit increases.
It will be interesting to see how this wave of bankruptcies will impact the very large and fragmented German banking system.
So the German economy is still in deep trouble, there isn't much to do. It will take some time before we see a serious recovery, given the problems related to energy costs. This is the real challenge for the new Chancellor Merz, who cares too much about the AfD and little about the measures necessary to revive the German economy.
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The article Germany: the growth in the number of corporate and private bankruptcies continues. The continuing crisis comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/germania-continua-la-crescita-nel-numero-di-fallimenti-aziendali-e-privati-la-crisi-continua/ on Fri, 09 May 2025 09:00:08 +0000.