Corporate slides in Austria reach record high - what is behind it?

Corporate slides in Austria reach record high - what is behind it?

In 2024, Austria experienced a drastic increase in corporate bankruptcies. The number rose by alarming 29.1 percent compared to the previous year and reached the highest value since 2020 with 3,628 cases, as current analyzes from Dun & Bradstreet show. The main factors are an economic recession, high inflation and increasing debt, reinforced by the end of state aid measures from the Covid 19 pandemic. The federal states of Burgenland and Vorarlberg, which with insolvency growth of 55 and 52 percent, are particularly hit by negative statistics. In addition to the big cities such as Vienna, in which the number of bankruptcies has increased by 26 percent, alarming trends are also shown in Salzburg and Styria.

industry -specific effects and start -ups

The real estate industry was the most affected section with an increase of 86 percent in the bankruptcies. There were also considerable growth in the area of ​​the manufacture of non -durable products (+78 percent) and architectural offices (+65 percent). The retailer reported 549 bankruptcies, while the hospitality industry recorded 411 cases. Despite this negative development, 21,439 new companies were founded at the same time in 2024, which corresponds to 7 percent gain. Carinthia and Upper Austria led the list of start-ups, followed by Vorarlberg and Vienna, while Burgenland was only able to increase a more modest increase of only 4 percent. The situation in Germany is also alarming, where bankruptcies were registered in the third quarter of 2024, which corresponds to an increase of 27 percent compared to the previous year. There were a total of 12,311 corporate insolvencies in the first nine months. The highest climbs were recorded in Hamburg (+51 percent), Lower Saxony (+37 percent) and North Rhine-Westphalia (+32 percent). Craft businesses were most affected, followed by wholesale and management consultants. These developments show that the economic challenges in Germany are also noticeable, with troubling trends that require further measures, as reported by DNB.