A dark year for the French economic fabric: more than 67,000 business failures were recorded by the Altares firm. Most sectors of activity are affected.
Never before have the commercial courts experienced such an abundance of people in a single year. The number of companies in bankruptcy exploded in 2024: more than 67,000 companies landed in the courtrooms of consular judges as part of liquidation, receivership or safeguard procedures. This is what the report on business failures carried out by the Altares firm shows, of which Franceinfo summarizes the main lessons in five graphs.
Businesses caught up in the Covid-19 crisis
After plunging during the Covid-19 period, the number of companies in default has now reached a record level, according to Altares. This company, an expert in counting and analyzing business failures, has counted 67,830 collective procedures for the year 2024. “It’s historic”affirms Thierry Millon, study director at Altares, to franceinfo. This figure confirms the trends observed since last summer with cumulative defaults over twelve months which exceed the levels observed after the financial crisis of 2009 and the sovereign debt crisis of 2010-2012.
This wave of failures is part of a movement to catch up with the freezing of procedures, decided due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Moratoriums had been put in place to allow companies in difficulty to spread their debts over several years”explains Thierry Millon. But this truce is over. Court summons resumed at the end of 2023 and even more so in the first part of 2024.
Added to this resumption of collections is also a turnaround in the economic situation, unfavorable for the most financially fragile companies. According to Thierry Millon, this gloomy situation is measured by the lengthening of payment delays. “They reached record levels in 2024, which we have not seen since the health crisis”he says.
It remains to be seen where the wave of bankruptcy filings will stop. “I think we are not far from the ceiling. But it is likely that we are not at a peak but rather on a plateau. Which means that we should remain at a high level of defaults in 2025”believes Thierry Millon.
More than 250,000 jobs at risk
The number of jobs threatened as part of collective procedures opened in 2024 is estimated at 255,737, according to the Altares firm. These jobs are mainly concentrated in the construction (19%), business services (19%), commerce (15%) and industry (13%) sectors.
This figure takes into account all the jobs which were threatened during the year, or which still are, including those which were not ultimately destroyed. This is the case of the glass manufacturer Duralex, placed in receivership in April 2024, and whose more than 200 jobs were saved after the commercial court validated the Cooperative Society (Scop) project carried by some of the employees.
But the majority of companies filing for bankruptcy end up bankrupt. More than 46,000 procedures opened in 2024 (i.e. two thirds) are judicial liquidations which result in the total disappearance of the companies concerned. “We are at high levels of potential job losses”estimates Thierry Millon, who also recalls that the majority of the remaining procedures for the year 2024 are judicial reorganizations, three-quarters of which will be converted into liquidation.
Most sectors are affected
Comparing the number of jobs threatened in 2024 with previous years shows that the wave of business failures is hitting almost all sectors of activity hard.
The year was particularly dark in the business services sector: +35% in insolvencies compared to 2023 and +125% compared to 2019. “Two services are struggling, explains Thierry Millon. These include private security and building cleaning companies. With teleworking, we ask these actors to do less cleaning than before.” In the insurance and financial activities sector, the boom in threatened jobs can be explained, among other things, by the bankruptcies of numerous real estate loan brokerage firms.
The situation has also deteriorated significantly in road freight transport. “There is not much to put into trucks and companies are making little money in this sector”notes Thierry Millon. The industrial sector, for its part, has recorded several failures among automotive equipment manufacturers as well as in textiles, like Le Coq sportif, which was placed in receivership last November.
Only commerce seems to benefit from a return to green. But this decline hides two different situations with, on the one hand, retail businesses which were rather spared in 2024 after a catastrophic year 2023, while insolvencies have sharply increased in wholesale trade, between companies.
Even big companies are struggling
The year 2024 was also marked by a sharp increase in bankruptcy filings among large employers (+27% in insolvencies over one year and +56% compared to 2019 for companies with 50 employees or more). “Even large SMEs can no longer do this. We have to go back to the 2009 financial crisis to find higher levels of failures among large SMEs with 50 employees or more”notes Thierry Millon.
“Some of these structures are falling in particular because they are struggling to repay their state-guaranteed loans”specifies Thierry Millon. But the analyst believes that the debts accumulated after the Covid-19 pandemic do not explain everything. “A lot of these companies also have poor fundamentals. They lack equity or suffer from poor financial profitability.”
Thierry Millon also points to possible chain reactions: “When the big guys fall, the risk is a domino effect towards their customers and suppliers.”
Jobs under threat everywhere in France
Unsurprisingly, Ile-de-France, which brings together nearly 20% of companies registered in France, was the region most affected by bankruptcy filings in 2024. Companies in collective proceedings registered in Paris have more than 26 000 jobs threatened (+102% compared to 2019). But other territories were also very affected. On the map below, the location of the head offices of the companies concerned was taken into account.
With more than 23,000 jobs threatened, Bouches-du-Rhône is the second most affected department. A figure largely driven up by one of the biggest social plans of the year: that of Milee, a company specializing in the distribution of advertising in letterboxes. Placed in receivership in May, the company based in Aix-en-Provence was liquidated in September. More than 10,000 employees have been made redundant throughout France.
The North is also home to large employers who ended the year in the red. Nearly 10,000 jobs were threatened as part of collective proceedings opened at the Lille commercial court. Several big names in the clothing sector were affected, such as the ready-to-wear brand Pimkie, placed in safeguard procedure in May 2024. The company, which still had 1,303 employees and 154 stores in the summer last, was finally granted a two-year reprieve. Two other northern structures were not so lucky: the Des Marques & Vous brand (463 employees) and the parent company of Chaussexpo (750 employees) ended up in liquidation.
Related News :