It’s not really a surprise. Business failures are expected to exceed their pre-health crisis level in 2023. They rebounded strongly in 2022 and accelerated in the fourth quarter, according to a study published Monday by the specialist firm Altares.
“With 42,500 procedures opened in 2022, the number of failures shows an exceptional increase of nearly 50% compared to 2021, a rate never observed before”, according to the press release from Altares, which lists all the procedures registered with commercial courts. In the fourth quarter of 2022, 12,256 procedures were opened.
The Banque de France, for its part, reported in early January a number of business failures slightly above 41,000 in 2022, but which, unlike that of Altares, does not take into account companies subject to a safeguard procedure. , which numbered 1,125 last year.
Altares notes that the level of insolvencies reached last year is still 10,000 lower than in 2019. During the health crisis, many companies were protected, some even artificially kept alive thanks to the aid granted by the State.
Some 143,500 jobs at risk
“While the return to pre-Covid standards has been underway for a year, the increase in defaults is accelerating alarmingly for SMEs with between 10 and 100 employees, of which more than 3,200 defaulted in 2022, with the third in the fourth quarter alone,” according to the firm.
The number of jobs threatened by these failures, which had fallen below the 100,000 threshold in 2021, jumped to 143,500. probably exceeded in 2023,” Thierry Millon, director of studies at Altares, told AFP. Just over 51,000 insolvencies were recorded by Altares in 2019, which was the year in which they had been the fewest since the 2008 financial crisis.
Since 2020, companies in difficulty have been saved more rarely: direct judicial liquidations thus represent three quarters of the procedures, compared to two thirds before the Covid, and this despite calls from the government and the Banque de France for managers to anticipate their difficulties and thus allow a transfer of their company or a spreading of the debts, deplores Thierry Millon.
Finally, the director of studies at Altares notes that while backups, reserved for companies that are not yet in a state of insolvency, are more numerous than ever, they still only represent less than 3% of the whole, 17 years after the entry into force of this procedure.