CRIF AG has looked at how many new businesses were established in the third quarter of 2019 and how many companies went out of business. All in all, 10,133 companies were set up in Switzerland during this time. This represents an increase of 4.6% compared with the third quarter of 2018. A total of 7,594 companies were also removed from the Commercial Register during the same period. This is 15.9% more than in the same period of the previous year. This steep rise in company removals is reflected in the figure for the net increase in the number of companies. Overall, fewer businesses may have been founded in the third quarter of 2018 than had been in 2019, but the resulting net increase in the number of companies was 3,137. In the third quarter of 2019 on the other hand, the net increase was just 2,539 companies. This represents a fall of just under 20%.
Most of the new entries were registered in the cantons of Zurich (1,813), Vaud (1,135) and Geneva (920).
A comparison of the number of business start-ups in the 3rd quarter with those founded in the 3rd quarter of 2018 shows that the highest growth was experienced in the canton of Vaud, with 181, followed by St. Gallen with 108 and Ticino with 71 new companies. On the other hand, there was a fall in the number of new companies set up in the cantons of Zug (-58), Valais (-40) and Basel-Landschaft (-29) when compared with the 3rd quarter of 2018.
In the third quarter, the net growth in new start-ups compared to the portfolio of existing companies in Switzerland reveals a net increase of 0.4%. The highest growth was reported by the canton of Thurgau, at 0.8%, followed by the cantons of Zug and Lucerne with 0.7 each. Negative growth was reported by the Cantons of Obwalden (-0.7%), Glarus (-0.6%) and Schaffhausen (-0.2%), together with Jura and Ticino with -0.1% each.
A look at the individual sectors reveals that start-ups were most frequent in the management consultancy sector (814) followed by the retail trade (714) and the construction sector (690). The largest number of removals from the register was experienced in the retail trade (780), followed by the wholesale trade (632) and the construction sector (620).
The areas with the highest net growth are in management consultancy (395), the real estate trade (315) and the health sector (297). There has been a reduction in the number of businesses in the wholesale trade (-89), in the food and beverage sector (-83) and in the retail trade (-66).
About the survey process
We have taken into consideration all those businesses that were newly entered into the commercial register in the period from July to September 2019, together with all the businesses that were removed from the commercial register during the same period. A business may, for example, be removed automatically for official reasons when the company is dissolved, when bankruptcy proceedings are terminated, at the end of the liquidity deadline, in the event of merger or when a company is closed in the absence of any succession arrangements.
The full study can be requested from presse.ch@crif.com.
