One of lime and another of sand in the Spanish business fabric. The first quarter of the year ends with fewer insolvencies than last year, a trend that occurs both in the month of April specifically, and in the data regarding the year to date. However, the majority are joint applications for bankruptcy and extinction of the company (what is known as ‘express contests‘), a percentage that does not stop growing and that reaches the highest figure since 2019 in the fourth month of this year.
According to a study of Report D&B, during the first four months of 2022, 2,073 bankruptcy proceedings have been registered, which represents a reduction of 2% compared to last year, mainly motivated by the good data for the month of April. “The contests are reduced by 18% in April, to 440, breaking the upward trend that they had had since the beginning of the year, in such a way that the accumulated data is also reduced by 2%”, explains the director of studies of this firm, Nathalie Gianese.
So much so that the fourth month of the year has dampened the number of dissolutions. Thus, although in the first quarter as a whole they have closed 11% more businesses than a year ago (12,600 in total), in the month of April specifically, the 2,200 disappearances of companies represent a decrease of 0.4% in compared to 2021, and a reduction of 26% compared to March.
The data also show a timid recovery of the hotel industry, which is the sector that most cuts the number of competitions: Subtract 123 from January and 40 in the month. In addition, this type of business is also among the industries that reduce their dissolutions the most, with 7%.
Trade gets worse
But here’s the good news. First, because the commerce sector registers 18% more processes than the previous year and it is, in fact, the productive area that heads the ranking since the beginning of the year. Second, due to the general rise in express contests.
“During 2020 and 2021, the number of companies that submit the joint request for bankruptcy and extinction has been growing“, indicates the Informa statement. According to these data, the year of the outbreak of the pandemic ended with 54% of these processes, in the following year 65% was reached, and during these first four months of 2022, the The figure has not dropped below 66% “In the last month of April specifically, it exceeded 70%, the highest figure since this indicator began to be followed in May 2019,” reveals the firm.
Of the total number of contests, almost nine out of ten are processes requested by microenterprises. In fact, no large corporation has filed for bankruptcy during the month of April.
In this way, Catalonia It is the community that heads the list. It is the autonomy with the most bankruptcy proceedings in the first four months of the year (540), although it is also the one that cuts the figure the most in absolute numbers: it registers 77 processes less than last year, a decrease of 12%.
In fact, the autonomies with which it rivals the most in terms of the number of contests, Madrid (451 until April) and the Valencian Community (304), both their figures worsen in relation to the same period of 2021, 18% and 4% respectively. Despite this, in all three cases, in line with what is happening in the State as a whole, the statistics improve in April.