Corporate bankruptcies
December 8, 2009
Official data released on Tuesday showed that the number of businesses filing for insolvency was up more than 17 percent on the year in September.
The Federal Statistical Office said that courts received 2,910 bankruptcy protection filings from companies in September, marking a 17.4 percent increase over the same month last year.
Over the first nine months of this year, 24,717 companies filed for bankruptcy – an 11.2 percent increase over the same period in 2008.
The statistical office says it expects corporate bankruptcies this year to total more than 34,000, compared with 29,291 last year.
The latest figures show that Europe's biggest economy has not yet shrugged off the economic crisis although Germany technically emerged from recession in the second quarter this year. However, unemployment is expected to rise over the coming months.
That's despite encouraging data released by the Federal Labor Agency at the beginning of the month, which showed a drop in joblessness in November. The agency said that the number of people out of work in the country dropped by 13,000 from October to November.
rb/AP/dpa
Editor: Susan Houlton