The Surface Story: Numbers that Reassure

June 2025: 313 companies were declared bankrupt in the Netherlands. That’s an 18% drop compared to the same month a year earlier. The bankruptcy rate sits at 8.5 per 100,000 businesses, a tidy decrease from 10.6 in June 2024.

At first glance, this looks like a quieting storm, perhaps even recovery. The hospitality sector, long the canary in the coal mine, shows 23.5 bankruptcies per 100,000, down from 39.7 a year earlier.

But let’s not confuse less noise with better music.

The Discreet Murmur: Where is the Occupancy Data?

This is the paradox we never question out loud: if fewer companies are failing… where are their payments? Where are the suppliers who never got paid? Where are the landlords whose invoices went unanswered?

If 313 bankruptcies were declared, how many weren’t, but should have been?

The data doesn’t say. It never does. Because bankruptcy is a declaration, but insolvency is often a performance.

And in that performance, many companies have turned into what I call “dead companies walking”: still paying salaries (barely), still holding office space (postponed rent), still delivering some product (with broken margins), but structurally unable to fulfill obligations. They don’t crash; they decay in slow motion.

The Quiet Deal: Payroll as a Social Stabilizer?

Let’s look at this differently.

What if this drop in bankruptcies is not a sign of recovery—but a strategic containment mechanism?

Consider: keeping a company afloat, even barely, allows for:

• Wages to be paid (at least partially),
• Unemployment numbers to stay flat,
• Government support costs to remain contained,
• Market panic to stay localized.

In a post-COVID economy still dizzy with stimulus aftermath, these near-dead firms are like suspension bridges between economic cycles. Shaky, overburdened, but useful.

And so we arrive at a moral paradox: perhaps these companies aren’t being “saved” but tolerated. Because their collapse would trigger second-order failures, in housing, in welfare, in employment trust.

The Missing Chain Reaction: Where Are the Collateral Casualties?

Every bankruptcy should leave fingerprints:

• A supplier unpaid,
• A customer abandoned,
• A staff reallocated (or discarded),
• A creditor unsecured.

And yet we see no data about these downstream effects. That’s like counting falling trees but refusing to measure the landslide.

This is where governance should step in: not to punish failure, but to map exposure. We need visibility on:

• Which unpaid suppliers are in risk of contagion.
• Which sectors are most interdependent.
• How many firms are running on “hope liquidity” instead of actual reserves.

Today’s insolvent client is tomorrow’s insolvent partner. It’s a chain. And every weak link is a warning, if we choose to see it.

The Final Note: Clarity Is Not Cynicism

Let’s be clear: a lower bankruptcy rate is not bad news. But assuming it’s good news, without understanding the mechanisms behind it, is a governance error.

Here’s what I believe:

• Some firms should go bankrupt, because postponing failure only spreads fragility.
• Others should be rescued, because their collapse would be systemic, not just individual.
• And all should be mapped, because risk is not just about death, but about decay.

If we truly believe in entrepreneurial merit, in market fairness, and in resilience, we cannot afford to be fooled by headline numbers.

We must ask:

“How many of these companies are alive… and how many are just not buried yet?”

Only then can we write policies, not eulogies.