Highest number of bankruptcies ever in Flanders | Domestic

Compared to 2022, this is an increase of 10.66 percent. The number of bankruptcies was also 2.66 percent above the previous record year of 2013, with 6,210 judgments. The hardest hit sectors were construction (1,387 bankruptcies) and the catering industry (1,102).

There has been a double-digit increase in all provinces, except Antwerp. This represents a decrease of almost eight percent compared to 2022, a record year in the province.

Flemish Brabant is an outlier, where almost sixty percent more companies have filed their accounts. GraydonCreditsafe attributes this significant increase mainly to the extensive cooperation between the court and the public prosecutor’s office in the hunt for fraudulent companies.

In absolute figures, the company court pronounced by far the most bankruptcy judgments in Antwerp: 2,060. According to GraydonCreditsafe, there were more efforts to close down ghost companies in the province in the first half of 2023, as in 2022.

Of the companies involved, almost half (46.46 percent) were younger than five years old. According to the trade information office, this high percentage can be explained, among other things, by the hunt for fraudulent companies (which are rarely older than three years), but also by the corona pandemic. Many companies that were founded just before the pandemic also collapsed. Despite government support measures, they often had insufficient reserves to get through the crisis, it said.

As a result of the bankruptcies, a total of 11,795 jobs in Flanders were at risk in 2023. The bankruptcy of Makro, headquartered in Wommelgem, cost by far the most jobs (1,826).