According to Altares, French corporate insolvencies rose 5,4% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, with 17.486 proceedings opened between April and June. Since the start of the year, 37.700 companies have failed, 1.500 more than in the first half of 2025. Direct judicial liquidations accounted for 66,3% of cases (11.591 rulings, up 4,8%), while judicial receiverships climbed 7,1% to 5.546 and now represent 31,7% of all proceedings, up from 31,2% a year earlier and 23,7% in 2022. Preventive safeguard filings remained marginal at 349 openings, or 2% of the total, against more than 3% in 2023. Altares notes that overall volumes still run close to 40% above pre-pandemic levels, when quarterly failures stood below 13.000.
Construction as a whole recorded 4.148 failures, down 0,8% year-on-year, which Altares describes as broadly stable, though it stresses that the average masks sharply different trajectories across segments. Structural work (gros oeuvre) improved markedly, with 1.054 failures down 12,4%, including an 11% drop in single-family house building and a 12% decline in masonry. Finishing trades (second oeuvre) also eased, down 5,5% to 1.922 cases, led by thermal and climate equipment installers (-20%) and electrical contractors (-15%). By contrast, Altares points to structural work and public works recovering colours while property development continues to face strong tensions.
Real estate remains, in the words of Altares, a hotspot of very strong tensions. Estate agencies managed to hold up, with failures down 4,9%, while property development insolvencies jumped 87,8% to 276 procedures, confirming concerns raised by industry body FPI. Altares attributes part of this spike to a 180% surge in failures among legal entities set up for individual real estate programmes, more than half of them construction-sale companies controlled by HPL Groupe. Public works, a pocket of resistance in the first quarter with a 20% decline, reversed course in the second quarter, rising 8,8% to 197 procedures, with a rebound of 18% in earthworks.
Across the wider economy, companies under three years old saw failures rise 12,7% to 2.248 cases, with more than three-quarters ending directly in liquidation. Jobs at risk fell 9,5% year-on-year to 58.830, below the 69.500 recorded in the second quarter of 2024, as the smallest and youngest firms bear a growing share of the strain. Thierry Millon, head of studies at Altares, said the rise in failures can no longer be explained by delayed effects of the health crisis, noting that state-guaranteed loan repayments and URSSAF summons now play a much more limited role, while operating costs continue to weigh on margins. Altares projects 34.000 to 35.000 new insolvency proceedings for the second half of 2026.