By Startups.ch, June 19, 2015

New Entries to Commercial Register in May 2015: Decline of the previous month continues

At a Total Switzerland level, 12.83% fewer companies were founded in May 2015 compared to the prior month April. This constitutes a further decline since the month of March, which performed strongly in terms of new registrations, and an already weak April.

With regard to the figures on company set ups, this trend represents the second month of decline in a row when compared with the prior month since April. The number of new registrations in May 2015 (3023) is not below that of April, but it is below that of the month of May last year (3,468). In absolute terms, this is 445 new registrations, or 12.8% in relative terms. We must point out that March was an extraordinarily strong month for registrations, so the bar was set very high.

Decline in all language areas

From a canton or language perspective, we saw a decline for new commercial register entries in all language areas in May 2015. In absolute terms, German Switzerland (-281 or -12.60%) and West Switzerland (-103, or -10.82%) were most severely affected compared to the prior year. The decline in all three regions explains the strong Total Switzerland decline of -445 or -12.83%.

The negative results in the month of May in German Switzerland compared to the previous month of April was characterised by the cantons of Basel City (-33.93%), Bern (-18.39%), Zug (-26.4%) and St. Gallen (-21.11%) Less severely affected but nonetheless disappointing is the otherwise strong canton of Zürich with a decline of 10.12%. The cantons of Lucerne (+4.11%) and Basel Country (+8.20%) bucked the trend, albeit with moderate increases. The decline in French speaking Switzerland has its roots in the otherwise West Swiss carthorses of Waadt (-17.37%) and Geneva (-6.23%)

Small cantons rely on the PLC

At a Total Switzerland level the GmbH or limited company remains the darling of new founders. 37.18% of new founders choose the “GmbH” as the suitable legal form for their business, followed closely by the “Einzelunternehmung” or sole proprietorship (33.28%) and the AG or PLC (21.07%). One interesting point is that in small cantons, the AG is by far the most popular legal form for new companies.