Record number of company formations in the first half of 2019
Switzerland is seeing a record number of new business start-ups: In the first half of 2019, 22,803 new companies were entered in the Commercial Register. This high number of new business start-ups represents a 2% percent increase over the previous year. This is the highest number of new company formations ever recorded since the Swiss Commercial Register was established. 2019 appears to be the year of the entrepreneurs.
With 8,877 start-ups, the limited liability company (GmbH) is the most popular legal form for starting your own business. The GmbH even has 4% more company formations than in the record-high first half of 2018, followed by the sole proprietorship with 7,565 formations (+4%), the stock corporation (AG) with 4,256 registrations (-4%) and the general partnership (KlG) with 709 new registrations (+4%). The analysis of the Institute for Young Enterprises IFJ shows that 93% of all GmbH formations are founded with the legal minimum of CHF 20,000 share capital, while 85% of the AGs are registered with the minimum of CHF 100,000 share capital. The highest registered share capital of an AG in the first half of 2019 is a proud CHF 425 million, for the GmbH there are four registrations with more than one million Swiss francs, the highest with CHF 1.2 million share capital.
18 cantons were able to increase their values and only 8 cantons had losses. Most cantons show a slight to strong increase in the number of start-ups compared to the previous year. The cantons with percentage losses are Lucerne with -3%, Obwalden -7%, Uri -15%, Zug -9%, Appenzell Ausserrhoden -11%, Schaffhausen -1% and Ticino with -5%. The cantons with the strongest percentage growth are Appenzell Innerrhoden (+49% or +19 startups), Thurgau (+16% or +83 startups), Glarus (+12% or +10 startups), Bern (+11% or +194 startups) as well as Fribourg (+9% or +63 startups) and Nidwalden (+9% or +9 startups). From the perspective of the major regions, the Espace Mittelland (+8%), Eastern Switzerland (+5%) and Zurich (+4%) in particular set positive accents.
