Suddenly a lot more bankruptcies

The number of bankruptcies in the Netherlands rose sharply in the first half of the year, reports faillissementsdossier.nl. According to the usually well-informed site, which writes a lot about bankruptcies, more companies fell over especially in the hospitality, retail and industrial sectors. This is said to be related to inflation. As a result, companies are spending more money on things like energy and purchasing products, and they are far from being able to pass on all those costs to their customers.

Faillissementsdossier.nl counted from January to June a total of 1,636 companies and institutions that went bankrupt. In the same period last year, there were 1006. This represents an increase of more than 60 percent. Last month, the number of bankrupts is said to have almost doubled.

Earlier, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) also signaled that the number of bankruptcies is picking up after hardly any companies went bankrupt during the corona years. But according to the latest CBS figures, for the month of May, despite the increase, the number of bankruptcies still remained below the level of the period before corona broke out.

Robert Jan Blom of bankruptcydossier.nl explains that the corona boom kept many companies afloat for a long time. But for some companies, he says, this was merely "a stay of execution. "You're talking about companies that otherwise would also have gone bankrupt because they were just doing badly. The aid offered them a safety net. Now they still have to pay back and that hits them extra hard," says the expert.

Chairman Jacco Vonhof of MKB-Nederland was already uneasy about the future of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands at a congress of his entrepreneurs' organization last month. He indicated that the bankruptcy wave previously predicted by experts no longer seemed far away and worried about the high wage demands of unions and staff shortages.

Source: Accountantweek