The number of business failures in France continued to rise in January, with a virtual doubling over one year for VSEs and small SMEs, the Banque de France reported on Wednesday.
Compared to January 2022, liquidations and receiverships increased by 51.6%, reaching 42,640 over the last 12 months.
This figure remains 16.6% lower than the number of insolvencies recorded during 2019, before the health crisis.
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In 2020 and 2021, thanks to support measures for businesses in the face of the economic slowdown and the cessation of certain activities during the Covid-19 crisis, the number of business failures had fallen sharply.
Last month, insolvencies almost doubled over a year for very small businesses (TPE) with fewer than ten employees (+94.8%), as for small businesses with a workforce of between 10 and 49 people (+97 .2%).
For medium-sized companies with between 50 and 249 employees, the increase is 82.2%.
For micro-enterprises (auto-entrepreneurs), the increase was contained at 49.1%.
At the other end of the scale, the rebound is limited to 24% for medium-sized companies (ETI) and large groups, i.e. 31 failures recorded last month against 25 in January 2022. The rise in liquidations and turnarounds legal proceedings concern all sectors of the economy but it is the strongest, with an increase of 108% over one year, in the hotel and catering industry.
This sector had been hit hard by the consequences of the pandemic and had therefore particularly benefited from government aid.
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But the increase is also very strong in industry, with nearly 70% more failures compared to January 2022, as well as in trade and automobile repair (+55.5%).
Agriculture and real estate activities are the two sectors least affected by the rebound in insolvencies, with increases limited to 9.6% and 11.8% respectively.
Expert firm Altares predicted last month that corporate insolvencies in 2023 would exceed their 2019 level, with that year remaining the best since the 2008 financial crisis.
