The 25 Biggest Bankruptcies in American History
The number of companies filing for liquidation or reorganization was more than double in the first three months of this year compared to the first quarter of last year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence – and marked the highest number of corporate bankruptcies in any comparable quarter since 2010.
Among the largest publicly traded U.S. companies to enter into bankruptcy so far this year are retailer Party City and business communications provider Avaya. Investors are watching to see if the writing will soon be on the wall for home goods seller Bed Bath & Beyond, movie chain AMC, and pharmacist Rite Aid, among others.
But by far the most notable public company to hit the skids this year is SVB Financial Group, aka Silicon Valley Bank. The 40-year-old Santa Clara, Calif.-based bank was the 16th largest in the country when it became the third-biggest bankruptcy of a U.S. public company in March.
To determine the nation’s 25 biggest public company bankruptcies of all time, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on bankruptcy filings from BankruptcyData’s 2021 Bankruptcy Yearbook, Almanac & Directory and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Public companies that have filed for Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy were ranked based on their total assets at the time of their bankruptcy. (Figures have not been adjusted for inflation.)
At the time they filed for bankruptcy, these companies had assets of between $25.8 billion (for The Hertz Corporation, which emerged from bankruptcy in October 2021) and a staggering $691.1 billion for the defunct New York investment bank Lehman Brothers.
Click here to read about the 25 biggest bankruptcies in American history.
Eight companies on this list filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and 2009 during the peak of the global credit crisis instigated by the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market. (Here’s a look at every year’s mortgage rate since 1972.)
Only three of these bankruptcies took place before 2000, two of them as a result of the massive savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. The earliest bankruptcy on this list was filed by Texaco, once a major U.S. global oil and gas concern that’s been reduced to a brand of fuel and some gas stations owned by Chevron. (See the price of gas every year since 1990.)
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