“Appearances are deceiving” runs the the headline on an article in the Hamburg Morning paper: the Corona bankruptcy wave is coming soon. It spoke with the credit insurer Euler Hermes, whose analysts say who said the impact of the lockdown period and the ongoing pandemic would become clear by the autumn at the latest. While Euler Hermes said Germany is in a comparatively positive situation compared to other countries, it predicted that insolvencies would rise 12 percent compared to 2019 while the number of bankruptcies would be 4 percent higher. The company’s head of insolvency and industrial Maxim Lemerle predicted that the cumulative increase in bankruptcies globally would be 35 percent during 2020 and 2021. “If the respective government support measures are ended too early, the increase will be 5 to 10 percentage points higher,” he added. The United States faces the worst prospects, however, as Lemerle fears the increase there could jump by as much as 45 percent.
