BUSINESS FAILURES WAY UP

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992                   TAG: 9202210121
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium
BUSINESS FAILURES WAY UP
Business failures hit record levels in 1991, up 43.7 percent, and insurance, finance and real estate companies took the brunt of the hit, a survey released Thursday said.
Falling real estate prices, debt-burdened businesses, stingy banks and bankruptcies from failed leveraged buyouts contributed to the demise of 87,266 businesses in 1991, The Dun & Bradstreet Corp. said. That was up from 60,746 in 1990.
Unpaid debts of defunct businesses totaled $108.8 billion, a gain of 95.9 percent from 1990.
New England had the nation's highest increase in business failures. The survey said 5,590 businesses failed there in 1991, up 81.1 percent from 3,087 the year earlier. More than half of the failures - 2,806 - occurred in Massachusetts.
Dun & Bradstreet said the Middle Atlantic region saw failures rise 75.6 percent; South Atlantic, 52.1 percent, and the Pacific region, 62.8 percent, mostly in California.
Joseph W. Duncan, chief economist and vice president at Dun & Bradstreet, cautioned that the prospect for slow growth could keep failures up in the early stages of 1992.
"Business has to pick up before that stress is taken off the balance sheet," Duncan said.
Duncan said the economic slowdown reduced business revenues, which strangled companies with large debts.
Across the country, troubled real estate was key to the 53.5 percent rise in failures among financial, insurance and real estate companies, Dun & Bradstreet said. Total debts outstanding among these companies rose 95 percent to $44.36 billion.
The failure rate was up strongly in virtually every sector of the economy. The survey showed construction business failures up 44.8 percent; transportation and utilities up 45.9 percent; services up 40.6 percent; retailing up 31.1 percent; and manufacturing up 37.8 percent. Agriculture, forestry and fishing failures were up 28.8 percent.
Though few in number, mining companies did best, with a 5.4 percent increase in failures.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB