Bank of France finds corporate bankruptcies reached record 68,602 in 2025 as cyclical pressures overtook post-COVID catch-up

The Bank of France has published an analysis showing that corporate bankruptcies reached a record 68,602 in 2025, 15% above the 2010-19 average. The annual increase slowed sharply to 3.6% from 17.7% in 2024, with the rolling 12-month total broadly stabilizing late in the year. However, the aggregate slowdown masks greater pressure on larger businesses. Bankruptcies among small and medium-sized enterprises, intermediate-sized enterprises and large enterprises stood 68% above the pre-COVID average, while microenterprise bankruptcies were 12% higher and accounted for 92% of the total. The analysis finds that the post-COVID catch-up has largely run its course outside microenterprises. Of an estimated 53,000 bankruptcies avoided from 2020 through 2022, about 38,000 had been offset by excess bankruptcies from 2023 through 2025. For business categories other than microenterprises, failures now exceed the pandemic-era shortfall and increasingly reflect economic pressures. Businesses that failed in 2025 had a median debt ratio of 31%, up from 25% among failed businesses in 2019, and a median turnover decline of 7%, compared with 3.4% in 2019. Strong business creation since 2016 has also increased the pool of firms exposed to failure, particularly among small enterprises. The number of new companies has grown by an average of 5.6% annually, and the Bank of France estimates this contributes about 0.84 percentage point to bankruptcy growth over a four-year horizon. This effect has been moderated by the concentration of new businesses in service and technology sectors with lower average bankruptcy rates.