Despite the first timid signs of economic recovery, bankruptcies do not seem to want to decrease. In Italy there are around 126 companies that currently have insolvency proceedings underway between bankruptcy and preventive agreements. Restricting the field to failures only, in the first half of 2013 approximately 6.500 new bankruptcy proceedings were registered, up on the previous year by +5,9%.
As bankruptcies mount, even historic businesses are struggling to resist. Due to the crisis, according to calculations and estimates by the Research Office of the Chamber of Commerce of Monza and Brianza, between 2008 and 2012 about 9 historic companies with more than 50 years of activity closed. This is 1 out of 4 historic companies. Before 2008, among companies with more than 50 years of activity, the same figure stopped at 1 out of 5.
At the territorial level, there is a more evident variation of new bankruptcies in Tuscany (+33,8% compared to last year), Calabria (+31%) and Trentino Alto Adige (+26,9%).
Lazio and Tuscany report the highest figure for new bankruptcies in relation to the number of active businesses (in both regions 1,5 companies out of 1000 started bankruptcy proceedings in the first six months of 2013). Among the Italian regions, the percentage of historic businesses that ceased trading between 2008 and 2012 rises in Calabria and exceeds half of the historic businesses (53%, about 250 businesses), as well as in Puglia (47,6% about 300 companies). In Lombardy, 1 historic company out of 3 has ceased its activity in these years of crisis (more than 4200 companies).
