Bankruptcy and Liquidation
- When
- 1889
- Where
- Panama (construction halt and deaths); Paris, France (winding-up order)
The French canal effort went bankrupt in 1889 amid high worker mortality and lost investor confidence; a Paris court ordered the company wound up on 4 February 1889.
France stopped work on the canal in 1889 because of a lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The French effort went bankrupt in 1889 after reportedly spending US$287,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 men dead from disease and accidents and the savings of 800,000 investors lost. On 4 February 1889, the Tribunal Civil de la Seine ordered the winding up of the Panama Canal Company in Paris. The construction halt and deaths occurred in Panama, while the winding-up order was issued by a court in Paris, France.
Sources
- Panama Canal Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-07
- Panama scandals Wikipedia
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.