The ten largest corporate bankruptcy filings on record, ranked by the assets each company reported going into US bankruptcy court.
Quick answer: 1. Lehman Brothers, 2. Washington Mutual, 3. WorldCom, 4. General Motors, 5. CIT Group, 6. PG&E (2019), 7. Enron, 8. Conseco, 9. Energy Future Holdings, 10. MF Global.
Lehman Brothers went into bankruptcy in September 2008 with $691 billion in assets - more than the next five largest filings put together. Nothing before or since has come close, and four of the ten filings on this list came within fourteen months of each other during the 2008-09 financial crisis. This is a ranking of the biggest corporate bankruptcies by the size of the company at the moment it filed, not by the losses that followed. It covers filings under the US Bankruptcy Code, which is where the standard public tally is kept and where almost all of the largest cases on record were filed. It is a piece of business history, not a guide to anything: several of these companies were liquidated, while others - General Motors, CIT, PG&E - came out the other side and still operate today.
The fourth-largest US investment bank filed on 15 September 2008 with $691 billion in assets, more than twice the size of any other bankruptcy on record. Its collapse, driven by losses on mortgage-related assets, was the defining moment of the 2008 financial crisis; the firm was liquidated and its North American business sold to Barclays.
Washington Mutual was the largest savings and loan in the United States when regulators seized its bank on 25 September 2008 and sold it to JPMorgan Chase - the biggest bank failure in US history. The holding company filed for bankruptcy the next day, credited with $327.9 billion in consolidated assets.
The telecoms group filed on 21 July 2002 with $103.9 billion in assets after admitting it had inflated its results by billions of dollars in one of the largest accounting frauds ever uncovered. It was the biggest bankruptcy in history until Lehman; the company emerged in 2004 under the name MCI and was bought by Verizon.
General Motors filed on 1 June 2009 with $91.0 billion in assets, the largest industrial bankruptcy on record. Backed by US government financing, its best assets were sold to a new General Motors company in about 40 days, leaving the unwanted plants and liabilities behind in the old one.
CIT, a century-old lender to small and mid-sized businesses, filed on 1 November 2009 with $80.4 billion in assets after its funding dried up in the credit crisis. It was a prepackaged bankruptcy agreed with bondholders in advance, and the company was back out of court in under six weeks.
California's largest utility filed on 29 January 2019 listing $71.39 billion in assets against $51.69 billion in liabilities, facing tens of billions of dollars in claims from wildfires linked to its equipment. It is the largest utility bankruptcy on record and the company's second: PG&E's utility arm also filed in 2001 during the California energy crisis. It emerged in July 2020.
The Houston energy trader filed on 2 December 2001 with $65.5 billion in assets, weeks after revealing that off-balance-sheet partnerships had been hiding its debts. Then the largest bankruptcy ever, it brought down auditor Arthur Andersen and led directly to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The company was wound up.
The Indiana insurance and consumer-finance group filed on 17 December 2002 with $61.4 billion in assets, undone by the debt it took on to buy mobile-home lender Green Tree Financial in 1998. The insurance business survived, emerged in 2003 and now trades as CNO Financial Group.
The Texas power company, formerly TXU, filed on 29 April 2014 with $40.97 billion in assets. It had been taken private in 2007 in the largest leveraged buyout in history, a bet on rising natural gas prices that failed when shale gas pushed prices down and left it unable to service its debt.
The futures and commodities broker filed on 31 October 2011 with $40.5 billion in assets after large bets on European government debt triggered a run on the firm. Its collapse exposed a shortfall in customer accounts that were supposed to be kept separate from the firm's own money; the business was liquidated.
| # | Name | Assets at filing | Filed | Industry | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lehman Brothers | $691.1 billion | 15 September 2008 | Investment banking | Liquidated |
| 2 | Washington Mutual | $327.9 billion | 26 September 2008 | Savings and loan | Bank sold to JPMorgan Chase |
| 3 | WorldCom | $103.9 billion | 21 July 2002 | Telecommunications | Emerged as MCI; acquired by Verizon |
| 4 | General Motors | $91.0 billion | 1 June 2009 | Automotive | Reorganised as new GM |
| 5 | CIT Group | $80.4 billion | 1 November 2009 | Commercial lending | Reorganised in December 2009 |
| 6 | PG&E (2019) | $71.4 billion | 29 January 2019 | Electric and gas utility | Reorganised in July 2020 |
| 7 | Enron | $65.5 billion | 2 December 2001 | Energy trading | Liquidated |
| 8 | Conseco | $61.4 billion | 17 December 2002 | Insurance and consumer finance | Reorganised; now CNO Financial |
| 9 | Energy Future Holdings | $41.0 billion | 29 April 2014 | Electric utility | Broken up and reorganised |
| 10 | MF Global | $40.5 billion | 31 October 2011 | Brokerage | Liquidated |
Ranked by total pre-petition assets in US dollars, following the tally kept by New Generation Research's BankruptcyData.com, the figures most widely quoted for this record. The top seven are as reported by Fox Business from BankruptcyData in January 2019, when PG&E's filing entered the list; the remaining figures are the same dataset as published in Insider Monkey's ranking. BankruptcyData generally uses the assets in a company's last public financial statements before filing, which can differ from the number on the court petition: Lehman's petition listed $639 billion against the $691 billion used here, General Motors' listed $82.3 billion against $91.0 billion, and CIT's listed $71.0 billion against $80.4 billion. Sources that use petition figures therefore show GM and CIT lower, and on that basis CIT slips just below PG&E into sixth place; the rest of the order is unchanged. Figures are nominal dollars at the time of filing and are not adjusted for inflation. Only bankruptcy filings count: banks that were seized and resolved by the FDIC without a bankruptcy case, such as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in 2023, are excluded, as are insolvencies handled under other countries' laws. Washington Mutual's figure is the holding company's consolidated assets, including the bank that regulators had seized the day before it filed - the convention the source follows.
Lehman Brothers, which filed on 15 September 2008 with $691 billion in assets. That is more than twice the size of the second-largest filing, Washington Mutual, and larger than the next five on this list combined.
Because the bank itself never went through bankruptcy. Silicon Valley Bank, with about $209 billion in assets, was closed by regulators on 10 March 2023 and resolved by the FDIC, as failed US banks are. Its parent, SVB Financial Group, did file for Chapter 11 a week later, but by then the bank was no longer part of it and the parent's own assets were far too small to rank here. Signature Bank, which failed the same weekend, had no bankruptcy filing at all.
They are using the assets stated on the court petition rather than the company's last published balance sheet. On petition figures General Motors had $82.3 billion and CIT $71.0 billion, against $91.0 billion and $80.4 billion in the tally this list follows. Lehman's petition figure of $639 billion is also sometimes quoted in place of $691 billion. The only change to the order on petition figures is that CIT and PG&E swap fifth and sixth places.
Several did. General Motors, CIT Group and PG&E all reorganised and came out of bankruptcy as going concerns, Conseco continues as CNO Financial, and WorldCom emerged as MCI before being bought by Verizon. Lehman Brothers, Enron and MF Global were liquidated.
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