Year to date, Commercial Chapter 11 filings are up year-over-year by 30 percent with a total of 6,081 new filings, compared to 4,677 in the same period last year, according to Epiq. However, new Commercial Chapter 11 filings in October were down 26.5 percent compared to September, with a total of 550 new filings compared to the previous month’s 749 filings.

Epiq, a global leader in legal services, released its October 2020 bankruptcy filing statistics from its AACER business.

“The lull in corporate filings is due to abundant liquidity which has enabled distressed companies to stabilize in the short term.  Companies will need to assess the longer-term impact of a slower recovery with a more significant disruption to their business,” said Deidre O’Connor, Managing Director at Epiq corporate restructuring.”

Overall, bankruptcy filings across all chapters were down 40.7 percent for October over the same period last year. There was a total of 40,209 new filings, which is down from 67,857 a year ago. So far in 2020, bankruptcy filings across all chapters are down 29 percent over the same period last year. There was a total of 460,269 new filings compared to the same period last year of 648,525 new filings.

“Non-commercial bankruptcy filing activity continues its steep decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Chris Kruse, Senior Vice President of Epiq AACER. “The various stimulus programs put in place earlier in the year created enough liquidity to stave off normal bankruptcy activity.”

So far in 2020, new Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 filings were down 44 percent and 21 percent, respectively. Chapter 13 Non-Commercial filings were 128,700 compared to 231,688 in the same period last year. Year-to-date Chapter 7 non-commercial filings was 302,745, compared to 382,625 in the same period last year.