New
Business Starts Slow Down in 2007
Filings with Vermont's Secretary of State's Office show
new business starts lagging in 2007
Montpelier. Secretary of State
Deb Markowitz announced March 13 that the number of new businesses registered with
her office's Corporations Division during the year 2007 have declined as
compared to prior years. As of January 1, 2008, there were
registered in Vermont 16,561 Vermont corporations, 8,848 foreign corporations
(out-of-state companies doing business in Vermont), 43,143 trade names (sole
proprietorships), and 15,641 limited liabilities companies. Of these, 9,452
were newly formed in 2007. This is somewhat less than the 9,971 new
businesses that registered in 2006.
Secretary of State Deb Markowitz
said, The slow down of newly formed business entities is a change from
the steady increases we have seen over the past decade. It may simply be an
anomaly or it may reflect Vermonters concerns about a potential
recession or it could be a result of the contraction of the lending
market. Markowitz said, Although
500 fewer new businesses registered in 2007 than the previous year, it is
important to remember that this is considerably more than what we saw a decade
ago. In 1997 there were 7,235 new business registrations, which is
over 2,000 less than in 2007.
"In past years we have found
that our business-starts statistic is a good barometer of confidence within the
business community, said Secretary Markowitz. The fact that we
continue to have over 9,000 new businesses registering in the state is good
news, but we should be watching carefully to see whether the slight decline is
an aberration or the start of a new downward trend, Markowitz said.
According to Markowitz, corporate dissolutions are also up
slightly. The 867 dissolutions in 2007 represent a small decrease from the
883 dissolutions in 2006.
The 9,452 new Vermont business starts in 2007 include
businesses that have been formed as corporations, as limited liability
corporations and those using a tradename. Markowitz said We did
not see a decrease in every form of business entity this year. This year
we saw continued growth in new businesses forming as LLCs.
Markowitz said, With the exception of last year, over the past six years
the number of new LLCs has increased by about 300 a year, said Secretary
Markowitz. In 2007 about 260 more new LLCs formed as compared to
2006.
Markowitz said The 929 new
foreign corporations filed in 2006 represent a decrease of about 40 from the
new filings registered in 2006.
In addition to seeing a decrease in
growth for certain for-profit enterprises, the Secretary of State's office also
experienced a decrease in filings of new non-profit corporations. The 413
new nonprofit corporations represented 50 fewer filings than in 2006.
The Office of the Vermont Secretary
of State licenses and registers foreign and domestic corporations, non-profits,
LLCs, and tradenames and is the repository for Uniform Commercial Code filings.
Information about the services offered by the Corporations Division, including
registration forms and searchable databases, is available at www.sec.state.vt.us.
#30
Secretary of
States Office New Business Registrations
YEAR (1996 - 2007)
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
New Corporations
2833
2703
2494
2635
2556
2387
2577
2753
2634
2479
2391
1851
New Trade Names
4025
3998
3948
4024
3989
3866
4328
4591
4296
4212
4317
4074
New LLC
184
534
682
917
1223
1504
1863
2262
2801
3124
3263
3527
TOTAL
7042
7235
7124
7576
7768
7757
8768
9606
9731
9815
9971
9452