Five firms a day go out of business

AN average of five companies per day went out of business last month, as the rate of business failures jumped by 33% on January’s levels.

The new figures from InsolvencyJournal.ie – the service operated by the country’s largest corporate recovery company Kavanagh Fennell – show that 146 companies went out of business in February compared with the 110 that failed in January.

According to Ken Fennell of Kavanagh Fennell, the monthly increase in insolvencies is significant and could well contribute to 2010 being a worse year, for business survival, than 2009. “This was the second highest monthly total, second only to December 2009, recorded by InsolvencyJournal.ie since January 2007.