Press release No. 015 of 11 January 2021
WIESBADEN – In 2020 German local courts reported 1,084 business insolvencies. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that this was a decline of 31.9% compared with October 2019. The economic problems of many businesses which were caused by the coronavirus crisis have obviously not been reflected yet by an increase in reported business insolvencies. One reason is that the obligation to file for insolvency was suspended until 31 December 2020 for overindebted businesses. Insolvent businesses have been obliged to file for insolvency since October 2020 but the effects still have to show in the statistics as courts need time to handle the requests.
In relation to the business insolvency requests, the prospective debts owed to creditors amounted to almost 2.1 billion euros in October 2020. In October 2019 they totalled just under 3.4 billion euros.
Basic data and long time series are available in tables Insolvencies (52411) in the GENESIS-Online database.
