Due to a continued decline in personal bankruptcies, total bankruptcy filings for calendar year 2016 will likely approach 794,000, representing a 6 percent decrease from the 844,495 total filings in 2015, according to an analysis from ABI's Ed Flynn. Based on data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) for the first 9 months and PACER data for the final 3 months of the year, Flynn estimated the following filing totals:
- Chapter 7s: 488,000 (down nearly 9 percent from 2015)
- Chapter 13s: 297,000 (down 1-2 percent from 2015)
- Chapter 12s: 460 (increase of 13 percent from 2015)
- Chapter 11s: 7,300 (nearly the same as in 2014 and 2015)
Gathering data from New Generation Research, Flynn found that there were more than 35 chapter 11 cases with over $1 billion in assets filed in 2016 — the most since 2009. Nearly one-half of these very large cases were oil and gas or energy-related, according to Flynn. Leading filing locations for large chapter 11 cases in 2016 were:
- District of Delaware: 17
- Southern District of Texas: 8
- Southern District of New York : 7
- Eastern District of Missouri: 4
Flynn, who previously worked for more than 30 years for the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees and the AOUSC, is the "Bankruptcy by the Numbers" columnist in ABI Journal. Click here to read his current column, "A Closer Look at State Filing Trends," appearing in the January edition of the Journal.
Full charts and analysis of the 2016 bankruptcy filings will be available later this week on the Statistics page of the ABI Newsroom.
