Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Rise in bankruptcies of Swiss companies

Significant increase in company bankruptcies
Significant increase in company bankruptcies Keystone-SDA

Company bankruptcies in Switzerland skyrocketed in the first nine months of the current year.

According to figures released by the business information service Dun & Bradstreet on Wednesday, 4,475 corporate insolvencies were filed during this period. This was 16% more than in the same period last year.

+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The number of insolvencies rose particularly sharply in south-western Switzerland (26% rise) while Central Switzerland recorded an increase of 22%, Eastern Switzerland recorded 19% and Zurich registered 17%.

Looking at the developments in the various sectors, the sharp rise in company bankruptcies in the automotive industry (+47%), architectural firms (+40%) and companies in the entertainment and leisure industry (+33%) was quite significant. In contrast, insolvencies in the construction industry fell by 35% and in wholesale by 10%.

Slightly more start-ups

Not only were there more bankruptcies in the first nine months of the year, there were also 39,162 more companies founded or newly entered in the commercial register. However, the increase was limited at only 2%.

The construction sector saw the strongest increase in start-ups at 38%, followed by the education sector, the land transportation and logistics sector and the automotive industry, each with an increase of around a quarter. In contrast, start-ups in wholesale (-29%), utilities (-11%) and architectural firms (-10%) were clearly down.

Adapted from German by DeepL/ac

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

The world's steepest cable car in the Bernese Oberland is in operation

More

World’s steepest cable car opens in Switzerland

This content was published on The world’s steepest cable car, connecting the villages of Stechelberg and Mürren in the Bernese Oberland, began welcoming passengers on Saturday.

Read more: World’s steepest cable car opens in Switzerland

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR