Commercial Chapter 11 filings rose 17% in August 2020 compared with August 2019, according to Epiq, with 525 new filings in the month up from 449 in the same month last year. In the first eight months of 2020, Chapter 11 commercial filings were up 28% over the same period last year, with a total of 4,779 filings.
“While we still see growth year over year in Chapter 11 commercial filings, the pace has slowed down significantly over July,” Deirdre O’Connor, managing director of corporate restructuring at Epiq, said. “Large corporations are benefiting from robust capital market activity which is providing access to capital at an attractive cost. However, smaller companies are not experiencing the same market dynamics to access liquidity and will consider seeking protection in a bankruptcy. We continue to see steady filings in retail, energy, entertainment, along with travel and leisure.”
As in prior months, non-commercial bankruptcies continued to decline both month over month and year over year. There were 36,842 non-commercial bankruptcy filings in August, down 8% from July, which had 40,085. Further, August filings were down 42% over the same period last year, which had 63,128 non-commercial filings across all chapters.
“We continue to see delays in filings as government and bank programs provide short-term liquidity relief to consumers,” Chris Kruse, senior vice president of Epiq AACER, said. “However, there is a backlog developing as unemployment rates continue to stay high, likely triggering more bankruptcy filings in Q4 2020.”
Chapter 13 non-commercial filings are down 41% in 2020, with 108,400 filings, which is down from 184,026 filings in the same period of 2019. Chapter 7 non-commercial filings were down 29% in August 2020, with 27,495 new filings, which is down from 38,604 in the same period in 2019.
Epiq AACER provides a bankruptcy information services platform.
