Liquidation
winding-up of a company
Liquidation or winding-up is the process in law by which a company is brought to an end and its assets and property distributed to claimants. When a company has been liquidated, it is sometimes said to be wound-up or dissolved, although dissolution technically refers only to the final stage of liquidation.
Liquidation may be either compulsory, ordered by a court (sometimes called a creditors' liquidation or, in Australia, a wind-up order), or voluntary, begun by the company's members (a members' or shareholders' liquidation), though some voluntary liquidations are controlled by the creditors.
The term "liquidation" is also used informally for a company divesting some of its assets. A retail chain wishing to close some stores, for instance, may sell them at a discount to a firm specialising in real estate liquidation rather than handle the disposals itself. A company may likewise sell assets in an orderly way outside a formal insolvency, for example to avoid having its portfolio written down in a compulsory liquidation.
In customs law, the term liquidation has a separate meaning: the final computation or ascertainment of the duties or drawback accruing on an imported entry.
Compulsory liquidation
The parties which are entitled by law to petition for the compulsory liquidation of a company vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally, a petition may be lodged with the court for the compulsory liquidation of a company by:
The company itself
Any creditor which establishes a prima facie case
Contributories: those who may be required to contribute to the company's assets on liquidation
A government minister, usually the one responsible for competition and business
An official receiver
Grounds
The grounds upon which an entity can apply to the court for an order of compulsory liquidation also vary between jurisdictions, but usually include:
The company has resolved to be wound up
The company was incorporated as a corporation, and has not been issued with a trading certificate (or equivalent) within 12 months of registration
It is an "old public company" (i.e. one that has not re-registered as a public company or become a private company under more recent companies legislation requiring this)
It has not commenced business within the statutorily prescribed time (normally one year) of its incorporation, or has not carried on business for a statutorily prescribed amount of time
The number of members has fallen below the minimum prescribed by statute
The company is unable to pay its debts as they fall due
It is just and equitable to wind up the company
In practice, the vast majority of compulsory winding-up applications are made under one of the last two grounds.
An order will not generally be made if the purpose of the application is to enforce payment of a debt which is bona fide disputed.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Liquidation” as winding-up of a company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as winding-up of a company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q885621. The Library of Congress control number is sh85077402. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Liquidation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.