Through its academic survey, the Research Centre of the Deutsche Bundesbank is obtaining a picture of the current situation among firms in Germany and gaining greater insight into their expectations for the coming months. Over time, the survey also provides crucial information on changes within the corporate sector.

In the second quarter of 2025, only marginally more firms than in the first quarter of the year reported that they had conducted loan negotiations in the respective preceding quarter (Q2 2025: 15.4 %; Q1 2025: 14.8 %). 

In the second quarter of 2025, firms’ assessments of the development of various metrics over the past 12 months were similar to their responses from the previous quarter. For 74 % of firms, access to financing sources remained unchanged, while 19 % reported that it had deteriorated – this represented a decline of 1 percentage point compared with the first quarter of 2025 and the lowest figure since the third quarter of 2022.

As before, there was only a slight quarter-on-quarter change in firms’ expectations over the next 12 months. 73 % of firms also expected that their access to financing sources would remain unchanged in future, which corresponded to an increase of 2 percentage points compared with the first quarter of 2025. The share of firms expecting a deterioration in their access to financing sources decreased by 2 percentage points. A decline in short-term liquidity was expected by 26 % of firms, while 18 % expected it to increase (previous quarter: 31 % and 17 %, respectively).

In the first quarter of 2025, firms again considered the high level of regulation and government rules to be their greatest challenge in the short term. In March, this was considered to be the greatest challenge by 69 % of firms, followed by the poor availability of workers, which was considered to be a serious problem by 55 % of firms. In the first quarter of 2025, between 48 % and 52 % of firms believed high energy prices would be problematic for them going forward. Around 38 % of firms said that competitive pressure would pose a challenge over the next six months. By contrast, around 32 % expected that this would not be a problem for them.