The numerous overlapping crises have caused Hamburg to slip to third last place in the national comparison for corporate insolvencies. Only the other two city-states of Berlin and Bremen did even worse this year, as the credit agency Creditreform announced on Tuesday. According to this, there were 62 bankruptcies for every 10,000 companies in Hamburg this year, in Berlin there were 86 and in Bremen 82. A year ago, Hamburg was reportedly on par with Saarland with 57 bankruptcies per 10,000 companies behind Bremen, Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia . The Free State of Bavaria recorded the fewest insolvencies this year with 35 per 10,000 companies, last year it was Brandenburg with 29 bankruptcies.
For the first time since the global financial crisis in 2009, Creditreform noticed an increase in company bankruptcies nationwide. “Persistent inflation, rising interest rates and energy costs as well as an increasingly tough competitive situation are affecting the substance of many companies,” said Patrik Ludwig Hantzsch, Head of Creditreform Economic Research. There were a total of 14,700 corporate insolvencies this year – 570 or 4.0 percent more than in 2021. An estimated 175,000 employees were directly affected this year – 34,000 more than in 2021.
According to the information, major insolvencies in particular have increased – above all the recent insolvency of Europe’s largest department store group Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof with its around 17,000 employees. But two large Hamburg companies also had to file for bankruptcy, firstly the shoe retailer Görtz with 1,800 employees, and secondly the office supplies retailer OfficeCentre GmbH with its German retail chain Staples and 900 employees. In the northeast, the MV shipyards were added with 2,300 employees.
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