Tighter credit, rising commodity prices, and slipping sales aren't slamming just Wall Street; now small businesses are getting hit.

More businesses filed for bankruptcy in April, 2008, than in any month since new bankruptcy laws took effect in 2005, according to a company that tracks federal court filings.

US commercial bankruptcy filings jumped 56% in April from a year earlier, court records show.

Business bankruptcy filings rose to 5,173, while total bankruptcy filings, including those by individuals, were up by 37% to 93,096.

The figures were compiled from US court records by data provider AACER.

Tropicana Entertainment, which owns casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, has become the latest firm to file for bankruptcy protection.

Known as Chapter 11, it allows a company time to reorganise and devise a plan to keep its businesses alive and pay creditors over time.

"This is the first step in making things better," Tropicana's president, Scott C Butera, told the Associated Press news agency.

Bankruptcies have risen as the US economy has been hit by a slowdown in the housing market and turmoil in financial markets.

NEW YORK -- US commercial bankruptcies soared 46 per cent in May from a year ago and many more are expected as the slowing economy chokes consumers and businesses, according to a bankruptcy management firm.

There were some 5,233 commercial bankruptcy cases last month, up from 3,589 in the year-ago period, according to AACER, a database of US bankruptcy statistics.

The U.S. bankruptcy filing figures through June 30, 2008, have become available courtesy of Automated Access to Court Electronic Records (AACER). For June, the bankruptcy rate was 4,275 new filings per day. After a large increase in February and again in March when the daily filing rate hit 4,303, the rate has stayed fairly constant throughout April (4,236 filings/day), May (4,268 filings/day), and now June.

WASHINGTON — Driven by a sour economy and skittish consumers, U.S. business bankruptcies saw their sharpest quarterly rise in two years, jumping 17 percent in the second quarter of 2008, according to an analysis by McClatchy.

Commercial filings for the first half of 2008 are up 45 percent from last year, as the national climate for commerce continues to deteriorate amid rising energy and food costs, mounting job losses, tighter credit and a reticence among consumers to part with discretionary income. 

From April through June, 15,471 U.S. businesses called it quits, according to data from Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, an Oklahoma City bankruptcy management and data company.