Press release No. 094 of 13 March 2020
WIESBADEN – In 2019 German local courts reported 18,749 business insolvencies. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that this was a 2.9% decline compared with 2018. The number of business insolvency requests fell to the lowest level since the enactment of the Insolvency Statute in 1999. An increase was last recorded in the crisis year 2009 (+11.6% compared with 2008). The local courts reported that the prospective debts owed to creditors amounted to just under 26.8 billion euros in 2019. In 2018 they had totalled roughly 21.0 billion euros. This increase in prospective debts despite the smaller number of business insolvencies is due to the fact that in 2019 business insolvency requests were filed by a larger number of economically important businesses than in 2018.
Basic data and long time series are available in tables Insolvencies (52411) in the GENESIS-Online database.
