What does the company's status information such as "in liquidation" (liq) and "terminated" mean? (✝︎)?

We use the terms "Active", "Liquidation" and "Terminated" as options to our "legal status" field, in order to distinguish the different phases in a company's life cycle.

On our website, each company is given a status that can have any one of the following three values:

  • Active, which is considered the "normal state" of a company.
    In legal terminology, the term "active" is not used in this sense; however, since there is no appropriate legal term to distinguish it from the other states, we use the word "active" for it.
  • Liquidation (liq)
    In legal terminology also called "dissolved". In this transitional state, the company has only limited legal capacity.
  • Terminated (✝︎)
    In legal terminology also referred to as "defunct" or "deleted". The company is closed. In this context, the word "deleted" does not mean that the company's data has been deleted. Instead, the entry of this company in the trade register has been given a corresponding label.

Important! The terms "dissolved" and "deleted" are often confused, however, they have different meanings.

The transition from active state to liquidation is also called dissolution. Liquidation is often an intermediate phase in order to terminate a company in a regular manner and properly settle all liabilities during this period. Liquidation can also be the result of insolvency proceedings.

A company can abandon liquidation and become active again (for example, after a successful reorganization in case of insolvency); this is also called continuation.

This representation refers to corporations (e.g., in particular UG, GmbH, AG, SE) and may differ for other legal forms. Also, there might be differences depending on the country or legal jurisdiction of the legal entity.

Liquidation, continuation, and deletion are typically announced in the country's trade register. We determine the status information based on those announcements. If the status cannot clearly determined (for example, in the absence of relevant announcements), then we will assume that the company is active and will not mark it further.

The North Data Power Search allows companies to be selected by their legal status.