Jelle Barkema, Maren Froemel and Sophie Piton

Record-high firm exits make headlines, but who are the firms going out of business? This post documents three facts about the rising number of corporations dissolving using granular data from Companies House and the Insolvency Service. We show that the increase in dissolutions that have already materialised reflected a catch-up following Covid and was concentrated among firms started during Covid. While these firms were small and had a limited macroeconomic impact, firms currently in the process of dissolving are larger. Their exit might therefore be more material from a macroeconomic perspective. We also discuss how the recent economic environment could contribute to further rises in dissolutions and particularly insolvencies in the future that could have more material macroeconomic impact.