Insolvencies up 1.5% in April from March

Just over 14,500 Canadian consumers and businesses went bankrupt or sought to renegotiate their debts in April, the Superintendent of Bankruptcy reported Thursday.

That's up 32.2 per cent from April 2008 and 1.5 per cent from March.

Insolvencies in the past six months April 14,455 March 14,244 February 12,320 January 10,775 December 10,477 November 11,194 Source: Superintendent of Bankruptcy

The total includes 11,465 bankruptcies and 2,990 proposals. A proposal is an offer to creditors to settle debts under different terms than originally negotiated.

Most of the 14,455 insolvencies, the term the superintendent uses to cover both bankruptcies and proposals, were consumers. Businesses accounted for 637 of the total cases.

The April increase pushed the total insolvencies to 135,927 in the year ending April, up 22.1 per cent from the year ended April 2008.