Expert on corporate resilience in crisis

Ms. Welter, for the past six years you have been looking at German medium-sized companies at the turn of the year – each time the crises got bigger. Now we have a war of aggression by Russia in Ukraine. Are German SMEs resilient enough to absorb the consequences?
There are no blanket answers. Some sectors such as gastronomy and retail have felt the pandemic more, the manufacturing sector is now more severely affected – and with it the industrial core of Germany.

And with it the resilience?
No matter in which industry, there will be entrepreneurs who initially got through the pandemic well with their business model, but whose reserves have been used up and who, due to the war and the rapidly increasing energy prices, are now saying: “I can’t do it anymore.”