How to Access Austrian Company Financial Data for Free
Austria is the inverse of the Nordic model, and that makes it one of the more demanding registers in this series. The Firmenbuch has been fully digital since 1991 and holds complete, court-verified company data — but access is neither free nor simple: basic search is open, everything beyond it sits behind statutory fees, an account, and in practice a network of authorised clearing agencies. The second constraint is time. Austrian companies have nine months after their balance-sheet date to file, the longest deadline in this series, which means Austrian financial data is structurally older than its Nordic or Benelux equivalents at any given moment. The data quality itself is high — court-maintained, complete, and enforced with personal fines on directors. This guide explains what the Firmenbuch holds, what it costs, why the nine-month rule matters for your workflows, the UGB size classes that govern disclosure, and how to plan around both constraints.
The Austrian company landscape
Austria is a high-income, export-oriented economy anchored by industrial engineering, machinery, automotive supply, energy, banking, and tourism, with an unusually strong Mittelstand of family-owned mid-sized manufacturers. Its corporate sector is closely integrated with Germany's, and Vienna serves as a long-standing headquarters base for Central and Eastern European operations — Austrian banks and industrial groups run substantial CEE subsidiary networks, which is why Austrian parent entities appear so often at the top of CEE ownership chains. For anyone who has worked through this series' CEE guides, Austria is frequently the jurisdiction where the chain terminates.
The sectoral shape
Austria's corporate value concentrates in a handful of areas, and knowing them helps read the register:
- Industrial engineering and machinery — the backbone of the export economy and the classic Austrian Mittelstand: global niche leaders such as Andritz (pulp, paper, hydropower, metals equipment) and Wienerberger (the world's largest brick manufacturer).
- Energy and utilities — OMV in oil, gas and chemicals; Verbund in hydropower-based electricity.
- Banking and finance — Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International, both built on extensive CEE branch and subsidiary networks.
- Automotive supply — a deep components and contract-manufacturing cluster serving the German industry next door.
- Tourism — an unusually large share of the SME population, alpine and urban, and one of the sectors most exposed in the recent insolvency cycle.
- CEE-facing real estate — groups such as Immofinanz operating across Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and Vienna.
The pattern to hold onto is that Austria pairs a small number of internationally significant groups with a very large base of family-owned mid-sized manufacturers and tourism businesses — and that many of the large groups are regional platforms for Central and Eastern Europe rather than purely domestic operations. Benchmark an Austrian company against the right cohort: a CEE-exposed bank, a global engineering exporter, and an alpine hotel business share a register and nothing else.
Legal forms and the 2024 capital reform
Austrian company law runs on the Unternehmensgesetzbuch (UGB), the Commercial Code, with entity-specific statutes (GmbHG, AktG). A significant reform took effect on 1 January 2024: the minimum share capital for a GmbH was cut from €35,000 to €10,000, and a new company form was introduced.
| Form | German | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| GmbH | Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung | The dominant form. Minimum capital €10,000 since 2024 (from €35,000), at least €5,000 paid in cash. Files annual accounts. |
| FlexCo | Flexible Kapitalgesellschaft (FlexKapG) | New from 1 January 2024. Hybrid of GmbH and AG aimed at startups and growth companies; €10,000 minimum capital. Same filing rules as a GmbH. |
| AG | Aktiengesellschaft | Stock corporation; minimum capital €70,000, one quarter paid on formation. Audited financials must be filed; individual shareholders are not always publicly visible. |
| Partnerships | OG / KG | General and limited partnerships; partners are named in the Firmenbuch. The GmbH & Co KG hybrid is common and files accounts. |
| Sole proprietor | Einzelunternehmer | Registration mandatory above €700,000 turnover in two consecutive years or €1,000,000 in one; voluntary below. The main coverage gap. |
| Other | SE, Genossenschaft, Privatstiftung | European companies, cooperatives, and private foundations — the last significant in Austrian ownership structures |
How many companies, and how to size the register
Austria does not publish a single headline "companies in the Firmenbuch" figure, so treat any precise register count with caution. Two official anchors are more useful. First, membership of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKO) is compulsory by federal law and attaches automatically when a business obtains its operating licence — so WKO membership is effectively a census of operating businesses, reported at 517,477 active businesses as of 2017 (the most recent figure verified here; WKO publishes updated counts). Second, Statistics Austria maintains the official business demography, including the insolvency and new-registration series used later in this guide — 21,439 companies were founded in 2024.
For the listed slice the number is precise and much smaller: 68 listed domestic companies at the end of 2024 (World Bank). The gap between roughly half a million operating businesses and 68 listed companies is the clearest illustration of where Austrian financial data actually comes from — the private GmbH and AG population filing with the Firmenbuch, not the exchange.
Two notes for a data consumer. The FlexCo is new enough to be a data-quality signal in itself: any FlexCo in your data was incorporated in 2024 or later, so the form is a reliable marker of a recently founded company. And the GmbH capital cut means capitalisation is no longer a useful proxy for company substance — a €10,000 GmbH incorporated in 2024 is not comparable to a €35,000 GmbH incorporated in 2019, and any model keyed to registered capital needs to account for the break.
Where Austrian financial statements live: the Firmenbuch
The Firmenbuch is Austria's commercial register, and its defining structural feature is that it is maintained by 16 regional courts (Landesgerichte) under the Commercial Register Act (Firmenbuchgesetz), not by a standalone agency. Entries are made by judges and court officers, which is why the data carries legal weight — registration is a judicial act, and legal existence for a company arises on entry. It has been fully electronic since 1991, when it replaced the older Handelsregister; register data therefore begins in 1991, a real limit for anyone tracing company history further back.
The Austrian company-data access points
One register, several routes in — and only the first is free.
JustizOnline
Public search portal
Free basic search: company name, register number, legal form, status, registered office and address.
Federal Ministry of Justice
Verrechnungsstellen
Authorised clearing agencies
The commercial route to full extracts and filed accounts, on statutory fees set by law.
Licensed private operators
Urkundensammlung
Document archive
Filed annual accounts, articles of association, and resolutions — publicly inspectable, retrieved for a fee.
Regional courts
- Basic search is free through the JustizOnline portal: identity-level facts — name, Firmenbuch number, legal form, status, seat, and address.
- Everything beyond basic data is paid. Full extracts (Firmenbuchauszug), historical extracts, and filed annual accounts carry statutory fees fixed by law, and access generally requires an account and identification — in practice Austrian or EU electronic ID.
- The document archive (Urkundensammlung) holds the filed annual accounts. They are public by law and inspectable by anyone, but retrieval is charged.
- Routing is fragmented. Depending on what you need, the counterparty may be JustizOnline, a licensed clearing agency, or a different ministry system entirely (GISA for trade licences) — a real friction point for KYB workflows compared with a single-agency model like Norway's or Denmark's.
Why this matters
Austria's data is high quality and legally authoritative — court-maintained and complete for registered entities. The cost is access friction on two axes. Financially, the per-document statutory fee model means systematic coverage of Austrian companies has a direct, volume-scaling cost, unlike the Nordic free-download registers. Operationally, the split between free basic search, paid clearing agencies, identity requirements, and separate ministry systems means an Austrian workflow has more moving parts than most. Budget for both when scoping Austria: the data is there and it is good, but it is neither free nor a single endpoint.
Get financial data for private and public companies via API or in bulk — with regular updates
MonetaiQ collects Austrian annual accounts filed with the Firmenbuch, parses them into clean, normalised fields — balance sheet, profit and loss, equity, and audit status — and delivers them in English alongside entity identity, legal form, and status. Available via REST API for live integrations or bulk feeds for warehouse loads, so you skip the per-document fee model and the clearing-agency routing.
Filing: nine months, and what that costs you
Austrian corporations — GmbH, FlexCo, AG, SE, and hybrid structures such as the GmbH & Co KG — must file annual financial statements with the competent Firmenbuch court no later than nine months after the balance-sheet date. Documents comprise the balance sheet, profit-and-loss account, notes, and, depending on size, a management report and audit report. Once filed, they are published and inspectable by anyone.
The nine-month problem
This is the single most important operational fact about Austrian company data, and it has nothing to do with quality. Nine months is the longest filing window in this series — against Norway's 31 July hard stop, Denmark's six months (four for listed), and Luxembourg's seven. Because most Austrian companies use the calendar year, a 31 December 2025 year-end need not be on file until 30 September 2026, and a company that pays the fine rather than filing on time can be later still. Austrian financial data is therefore structurally staler than its neighbours' at any given moment. For credit decisions, monitoring, or model training, treat Austrian financials as a lagging indicator by design: check the balance-sheet date, not the filing date, and expect a materially older picture than you would get from a Nordic counterparty.
Late filing: fines on the company and on directors personally
Austria enforces the deadline with automatic financial penalties rather than dissolution, and they escalate by company size:
- Immediately after the nine-month deadline expires, the court imposes fines of €700 to €3,600 — reduced to €350 to €1,800 for a small company.
- For each further two months of delay, an additional fine follows: €700 for small companies, rising to €2,100 for medium-sized and €4,200 for large corporations.
- Critically, the fines are imposed on each managing director personally as well as on the corporation itself — a design that puts direct pressure on individuals rather than the balance sheet alone.
The practical result is a register with strong compliance among registered corporations, and a late-filing population that is measurable rather than invisible: a company filing beyond the deadline is paying escalating personal penalties to do so, which is itself a signal worth capturing.
Size classes: what actually gets disclosed
Disclosure depth is set by the UGB size classes, which sort companies into micro, small, medium, and large on three criteria — balance-sheet total, revenue, and average employees — with a company changing class after exceeding two of three in two consecutive financial years.
A significant update applies here. The UGB-Schwellenwerte-Verordnung, published 20 November 2024, implemented EU Delegated Directive 2023/2775 and raised the balance-sheet and revenue thresholds by roughly 25% to correct for inflation, while leaving the employee thresholds unchanged. It applies retrospectively to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2024.
Why the 2024 threshold change matters for your data
The uplift means companies stay in smaller size categories longer — which reduces their compliance burden and, from a data-consumer's perspective, reduces what they publish. Smaller classes disclose less: micro and small companies file abridged balance sheets with reduced notes and are generally not required to publish a full profit-and-loss account, and audit obligations attach to the larger classes. So a cohort of Austrian companies that would have published fuller accounts under the old thresholds now publishes less, starting with FY2024. If you are comparing Austrian financial data across 2023 and 2024 and see disclosure apparently thinning, that is a regulatory artefact, not a change in the companies. The same size classes also determine CSRD sustainability-reporting obligations, so the effect extends beyond the financial statements.
Accounting standards, audit, and consolidation
- Austrian GAAP (UGB) — the default for individual company accounts, prepared in euro under the Commercial Code.
- EU-adopted IFRS — mandatory for the consolidated accounts of public-interest entities: listed companies, credit institutions, and insurance companies. All other entities may choose IFRS or Austrian GAAP for consolidated statements.
- Consolidation — Austrian companies with subsidiaries are required to prepare consolidated financial statements and a consolidated management report, subject to size-based exemptions (also uplifted by the 2024 ordinance). Given how many Austrian parents sit above CEE subsidiary networks, the parent-versus-consolidated distinction matters more here than in most jurisdictions: a Vienna holding entity's standalone accounts may describe very little of the group's real activity.
- Audit — obligations attach by size class; larger companies and all public-interest entities must be audited, while micro and small companies are generally exempt. Audit-exempt companies still file.
Distributions and capital maintenance
Austria applies one of Europe's stricter capital-maintenance regimes, and it shapes how equity should be read. Distributions to shareholders are limited to the balance-sheet profit shown in the adopted annual accounts — not to equity at large — and Austrian law imposes a broad prohibition on the return of capital contributions (Verbot der Einlagenrückgewähr) under the GmbH and stock corporation statutes. The prohibition reaches beyond formal dividends to any transaction that transfers value from the company to a shareholder outside a permitted distribution, including non-arm's-length intra-group dealings, and breaches carry restitution and personal liability consequences for management.
For a data consumer, two implications follow. An Austrian company's equity line should not be read as distributable capacity — the distributable figure is the balance-sheet profit, and share capital and tied reserves sit behind it. And in group structures, intra-group transactions with an Austrian subsidiary are legally constrained in ways that do not apply everywhere: unusual related-party flows in an Austrian entity's accounts are worth a second look, because the legal bar for them is high.
Tax: what the accounts sit on
Austria's corporate income tax (Körperschaftsteuer) was reduced to 23% from 1 January 2024, having been 24% in 2023 and 25% in 2022 — part of the eco-social tax reform. Points that shape the numbers:
- Minimum corporate tax (Mindestkörperschaftsteuer) applies even in loss years: €500 per year for a GmbH (cut from €1,750 alongside the 2024 capital reform) and €3,500 for an AG. It can be carried forward indefinitely and credited against future tax.
- Dividend withholding runs at 23% for corporate recipients and 27.5% for others, reducible under treaties and the EU Parent-Subsidiary Directive.
- VAT is 20% standard, with 10% and 13% reduced rates.
- Pillar Two global minimum taxation applies to groups with at least €750 million in net sales in two of the last four years.
The rate path matters for time-series work: a multi-year Austrian dataset spans three different headline rates (25% → 24% → 23%), so effective-tax-rate comparisons across 2022–2024 need the change accounted for rather than read as company behaviour.
Private foundations: who actually owns Austria
One structure dominates Austrian ownership analysis and has no equivalent in most of Europe. Since the Private Foundation Act (Privatstiftungsgesetz) of 1993, Austrian families and entrepreneurs have used the Privatstiftung — a legal entity with no owners, members, or shareholders — to hold and pass on corporate wealth. The Act was written partly to stop Austrian capital migrating to Liechtenstein foundations, and it worked.
A Privatstiftung has its own legal personality and holds assets independently of its founder, who can nonetheless retain substantial influence through carefully drafted foundation documents. Beneficiaries hold no ownership rights — only entitlements defined in the statutes. Foundations are registered in the Firmenbuch and have their own filing obligations, but the internal documents that determine who benefits and who controls are not part of the public financial record. Around 400,000 jobs are estimated to depend indirectly on foundation-controlled companies.
Why this matters for the data
If you trace ownership of a large Austrian company, the chain very often terminates at a Privatstiftung — an entity with no shareholders at all. This is the Austrian counterpart to Denmark's commercial foundations and Sweden's ownership spheres, and it produces the same analytical break: the legal ownership record ends at a structure whose control mechanics live in private foundation documents rather than in a share register. Practically, an ownership graph built only from Firmenbuch shareholdings will show foundations as terminal nodes and stop there. Treat that as the expected outcome for Austria's largest companies, not as a data gap in your pipeline — and record the foundation itself as the controlling entity rather than leaving the chain unresolved.
Regulators, the central bank, and the euro
Financial supervision sits with the Financial Market Authority (Finanzmarktaufsicht, FMA), which regulates banks, insurers, pension funds, and investment firms, and reviews banking acquisitions. The Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) is the central bank; Austria is a eurozone member, so monetary policy is ECB and the largest banks fall under ECB banking supervision through the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Two further bodies matter for corporate data work: the Firmenbuchgerichte (commercial register courts) register and publish transactions, mergers, and reorganisations, and the Takeover Commission (Übernahmekommission) supervises public M&A involving listed stock corporations under the Takeover Act.
The practical consequence is the familiar one: banks, insurers, and pension funds report under sector-specific rules outside the ordinary UGB framework, so their statements are not directly comparable with those of commercial companies. The OeNB also publishes economic and firm-level research — including analysis of Austrian firm entry and exit dynamics — that is useful context alongside the register itself.
Listed companies: the Wiener Börse
Austria's exchange, the Wiener Börse, was founded in 1771 and is among the oldest in the world. Its lead index, the ATX (Austrian Traded Index), is a price index of 20 stocks, and the exchange lists over 60 Austrian companies across its segments, headed by the prime market. Familiar names include Erste Group, OMV, Verbund, Raiffeisen Bank International, Andritz, Wienerberger, Immofinanz, and Kapsch TrafficCom — a mix that mirrors the wider economy: banking, energy, industrial engineering, building materials, and CEE-focused real estate.
The exchange has a distinctive regional dimension: Wiener Börse owns the Prague Stock Exchange and has held stakes in other regional venues, reinforcing Vienna's role as a CEE financial hub. It opened the exchange-regulated Vienna MTF in 2019 as a lighter-touch market. All listings are in euro. As across this series, though, the listed population is a fraction of the register: the overwhelming majority of Austrian company financial data comes from the annual accounts of private GmbHs and AGs filed with the Firmenbuch, not from listed disclosures.
Insolvency: the highest levels in over a decade
Austria has been running one of Europe's more severe insolvency cycles, and the official data is unambiguous. According to Statistics Austria, bankruptcies rose 23% in 2024 to 6,545 — the highest figure since its records began in 2019 — with the service sector worst affected, followed by construction and trade. In the fourth quarter alone, 1,713 enterprises filed for insolvency, around a fifth more than the same quarter of 2023. The creditor-protection association KSV1870 reported a closely comparable 6,587 registered insolvencies for the year, describing 2024 as the highest level since the 2009 financial crisis.
Austrian corporate insolvencies
Bankruptcies per year. Source: Statistics Austria; KSV1870.
Insolvencies rose 23% in 2024 to 6,545 (Statistics Austria), the highest since its series began in 2019; KSV1870 records 6,587 on a slightly different basis. Provisional liabilities rose 35% to around €18.9 billion, driven by major cases including KTM AG and the Signa Group.
The severity is not only in the count. Provisional liabilities rose 35% in 2024 to around €18.9 billion, driven by a handful of very large failures — notably KTM AG and the Signa Group — with affected employees up 25% and creditors up 10%. The pressure continued into 2025: KSV1870 recorded 3,491 corporate insolvencies in the first half of 2025, a 6% year-on-year increase, averaging 19 companies per day, with retail, construction, and hospitality accounting for nearly half of all filings and real estate up 81% in the continuing fallout from Signa. KSV1870's own analysis attributes roughly two-thirds of failures to operational or strategic causes and management fault rather than purely external shocks.
One counterweight worth noting: business formation held up through the same period, with 21,439 new companies founded in 2024, up 7% on 2023 — so the register is churning at both ends rather than simply contracting.
A data-literacy note on Austrian insolvency figures
Austrian insolvency counts differ between sources, and the difference is methodological rather than a sign that one is wrong. Statistics Austria and KSV1870 draw on the same underlying data but publish slightly different totals (6,545 versus 6,587 for 2024) because of differences in coverage, reference timing, and how units are assigned to sectors. Other counts — of insolvency proceedings opened, as opposed to total filings — run materially lower again. When quoting Austrian insolvency statistics, name the source and the measure; comparing a proceedings-opened figure from one year to a total-filings figure from another will manufacture a trend that does not exist.
Four pitfalls in Austrian financial data workflows
Pitfall 1: Budgeting Austria like a free register
Basic search is free; extracts and accounts are not. Statutory per-document fees scale directly with volume, so systematic Austrian coverage is a line item, not a rounding error. Scope the cost before committing to a coverage target.
Pitfall 2: Treating Austrian financials as current
The nine-month deadline plus late-filing tolerance means Austrian data is older than Nordic or Benelux equivalents at any given moment. Always work from the balance-sheet date, and set monitoring expectations accordingly.
Pitfall 3: Reading a Vienna parent as the business
Austrian entities frequently sit at the top of CEE group structures. A standalone Austrian parent's accounts may capture little of the group's operations. Check whether consolidated statements exist before drawing conclusions from the parent-only filing.
Pitfall 4: Comparing registered capital across the 2024 break
The GmbH minimum fell from €35,000 to €10,000 on 1 January 2024, and the FlexCo arrived at €10,000. Capitalisation is no longer comparable across the reform date, and any scoring model keyed to share capital needs recalibration.
How Austria compares to other European registers
| Jurisdiction | Financial statements | Deadline | Cost & access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | Full accounts; small/micro abridged, often no P&L | 9 months | Paid statutory fees; court-run; clearing agencies |
| Norway | Full income statement + balance sheet | 31 July (hard) | Free, incl. certified extract; open API |
| Denmark | Full statements; classes A–D | 6 months (4 listed) | Free; XBRL + API |
| Luxembourg | Full accounts; small-co abridged (no P&L) | 7 months | Free PDF; paid API |
| Ireland | Full statements; small-co abridgement | Return-date based | Paid per document |
Austria sits at the demanding end on both axes this table measures: it is one of the few registers that is both paid and slow. What it offers in return is court-verified data quality and completeness for registered corporations — an accuracy-for-cost-and-latency trade that is worth making deliberately rather than by accident.
What's free, what costs money, and where to find it
The Austrian bottom line
Austria gives you court-verified, legally authoritative company data, complete for registered corporations back to 1991, enforced with personal fines on directors. It charges you for it, and it delivers it late. The nine-month filing deadline — the longest in this series — makes Austrian financials structurally older than their Nordic and Benelux equivalents, and the statutory per-document fee model makes systematic coverage a real cost line. Add the 2024 threshold uplift that thins small-company disclosure from FY2024, the capital-reform break in comparability, and the frequency of Vienna parents sitting above CEE groups, and Austria rewards a workflow that budgets deliberately, reads balance-sheet dates rather than filing dates, and always checks for the consolidated statements.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Austrian company financial data publicly available?
Yes, but not freely. Corporations must file annual financial statements with the Firmenbuch, and the filed documents are public and inspectable by anyone. Basic company search is free through JustizOnline, but full extracts and the financial statements themselves carry statutory fees and generally require an account and electronic identification.
Where do I find an Austrian company's financial statements?
In the Firmenbuch's document archive (Urkundensammlung), maintained by the regional courts. Access runs through JustizOnline or an authorised clearing agency (Verrechnungsstelle), with statutory per-document fees. Basic identity data is free; the accounts are not.
Is the Austrian Firmenbuch free?
Only in part. Basic search — company name, register number, legal form, status, and registered office — is free. Full extracts, historical extracts, and filed annual accounts are charged at fees fixed by law, and access typically requires registration and Austrian or EU electronic ID.
When must Austrian companies file their annual accounts?
Within nine months of the balance-sheet date — the longest filing window in this series. For a 31 December year-end, that means 30 September of the following year. Late filing triggers court-imposed fines from €700 to €3,600 (€350 to €1,800 for small companies), escalating every further two months, and imposed on each managing director personally as well as on the company.
Why is Austrian financial data older than other countries'?
Because of the nine-month deadline. Against Norway's hard 31 July stop, Denmark's six months, and Luxembourg's seven, Austria's window means a calendar-year company's accounts need not be public until 30 September of the following year, and late filers can be later still. Austrian financials should be treated as a structurally lagging source: work from the balance-sheet date rather than the filing date.
What is a FlexCo?
The Flexible Kapitalgesellschaft (FlexKapG), a company form introduced on 1 January 2024 as a hybrid of the GmbH and AG, aimed at startups and growth companies. Its minimum share capital is €10,000 and it follows the same filing rules as a GmbH. Because the form only exists from 2024, its presence in your data reliably indicates a recently founded company.
What is the minimum share capital for an Austrian GmbH?
€10,000 since 1 January 2024, reduced from €35,000, with at least €5,000 to be paid in cash on formation. An AG requires €70,000. The reduction means registered capital is not comparable across the reform date, so any analysis keyed to capitalisation needs to account for the break.
Do small Austrian companies publish a profit-and-loss account?
Generally not. Disclosure scales with the UGB size classes — micro, small, medium, and large — and smaller classes file abridged balance sheets with reduced notes and are not required to publish a full profit-and-loss account. Audit obligations similarly attach to the larger classes.
What changed with Austrian size thresholds in 2024?
The UGB-Schwellenwerte-Verordnung, published 20 November 2024, implemented EU Delegated Directive 2023/2775 and raised the balance-sheet and revenue thresholds by roughly 25% for inflation, leaving employee thresholds unchanged, applying to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2024. Companies stay in smaller categories longer and therefore publish less, so apparent thinning of disclosure from FY2024 is a regulatory artefact rather than a change in the companies.
What is an Austrian Privatstiftung, and why does it matter for ownership data?
A Privatstiftung is an Austrian private foundation created under the Private Foundation Act of 1993 — a legal entity with no owners, members, or shareholders, used to hold and transfer corporate wealth. There are more than 3,000 of them, holding an estimated €70 billion, and around 80 of Austria's 100 largest companies are controlled by one. For ownership analysis this means the chain often ends at a foundation rather than a person: record the foundation as the controlling entity, because the mechanics of control sit in private foundation documents rather than in any share register.
How many company insolvencies were there in Austria in 2024?
Statistics Austria recorded 6,545 bankruptcies in 2024, a 23% rise and the highest since its series began in 2019; KSV1870 reports 6,587 on a slightly different basis, calling it the highest since the 2009 financial crisis. Provisional liabilities rose 35% to around €18.9 billion, driven by major cases including KTM AG and the Signa Group. The first half of 2025 saw a further 6% increase to 3,491 cases — about 19 companies per day.
Do Austrian companies use IFRS or local GAAP?
Individual company accounts are prepared under Austrian GAAP (the UGB Commercial Code). EU-adopted IFRS is mandatory for the consolidated accounts of public-interest entities — listed companies, credit institutions, and insurers — while other companies may choose IFRS or Austrian GAAP for consolidation.