Closely related to this question: Did Donald Trump file for bankruptcy four times? Donald Trump has consistently claimed that filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is not unheard of and 'only' four bankruptcy claims out of all his businesses is a good ratio:
Out of hundreds of deals that I’ve done, hundreds, on four occasions I’ve taken advantage of the laws of this country, like other people. I’m not going to name their names because I’m not going to embarrass, but virtually every person that you read about on the front page of the business sections, they’ve used the law.
- From this debate transcript discussed in this article.
My question: is this accurate? Are four bankruptcies out of all his businesses a common or reasonable number of bankruptcy claims? Is this ratio consistent with other business entrepreneurs ratios?
My focus is on the time period from 1965 to present. Beyond that I would prefer samples as similar to the sort of businesses that Donald Trump was involved in; however, I'm afraid that there is a limited number of entrepreneurs similar to Trump to compare to. I don't want to place too many restrictions and find that I've limited us to a sample size of one.
Even a rough approximation would be better than no data at all, so a comparison with the average failure rate of businesses in America may be sufficient.