I'm not certain about it but I think debts from criminal offenses are not cleared on personal bankruptcy. Sozialversicherungsbetrug (not paying your employees social security) and tax evasion are criminal offenses for the manager of a company so they'd not be cleared. However, if you start up a company with employees you'd want a limited liability company of some form anyways, so personal liability only extends to criminal negligence or criminal offenses. It's still easy enough to get burned and indebted as manager though.

Agreed. Ireland is 7 years I think (though it's being reduced). UK might be 1 year.

To think of it from another perspective, harder bankruptcies mean that your debtors are not able to escape from their debts as easy. Surely that's a good thing for a business?