Who This is for
Trading ended, the office was given up, and nobody filed anything. The company is still on the register.
A structure left open in a country you no longer live in is the hardest kind to fix later.
Several entities, one or two dormant for years, all still generating obligations.
The venture is over and neither shareholder wants to be the one still named on a licence.
An unclosed entity, an unpaid balance or an uncancelled establishment card has surfaced during a new formation, a visa application or a bank onboarding.
And the family needs the company closed rather than inherited.
What it Means to Abandon a Company
An unrenewed licence is not a closed company. Until the registry deregisters it, the entity continues to exist — and the following continue with it.
Against a company that is doing nothing.
The establishment card and every residence visa it sponsors stay live until cancelled — including visas of people who left the company, and the country, long ago.
Registration is required of all taxable persons regardless of profit or trading, and a registration that is not deregistered has filing obligations attached to it.
Whatever the entity accumulates is attached to names, and those names are used again the next time any of them applies for anything. Limited liability is not a shield against obligations that arose because the company was never administered.
During a new formation, a Golden Visa application, a licence renewal elsewhere, or a bank’s periodic review — because that is when someone checks.
The amount at stake grows with time, and unlike most corporate problems it grows silently.
What's Included
How it Works
The sequence matters. Several of these steps are gates: the registry will not accept the next document until the previous clearance exists.
Establish the real position
Outstanding renewals, penalties, live visas, open tax registrations, unfiled returns, and anything registered against the company. The closure cannot be priced honestly before this is known.
Resolution and liquidator appointment
A formal resolution to dissolve, executed and attested where a shareholder is a company or is abroad, with the liquidator’s letter of acceptance.
Initial deregistration and notice to creditors
The registry records the company as in liquidation. Notice is published, followed by a claim period during which creditors may come forward. Nothing final can be filed until it has run.
Settle employees and cancel the immigration file
End of service entitlements paid, labour file closed, every sponsored visa cancelled, then the establishment card. Frequently the longest stage.
Collect the clearances
Utilities, telecoms, customs, lease termination and landlord clearance, and closure of the bank account with the bank’s confirmation letter. One is always harder than expected.
Final accounts and liquidator’s report
Confirming assets realised, liabilities settled and any distribution to shareholders.
Tax deregistration
Outstanding returns filed, liabilities settled, and corporate tax and VAT registrations formally deregistered rather than left dormant.
Deregistration certificate
The registry cancels the licence and issues the certificate. Keep it — it is the document that proves the company ended, and the one people cannot produce years later when they need it.
What We Need from You
If most of this is missing, we can still begin. Retrieving the record is the first stage of the work.
Timeline and Cost
Closure takes longer than formation, and the reason is not the registry. Time goes into cancelling the immigration file, running the creditor notice period, bringing accounts and returns up to date, and obtaining clearances from counterparties with their own procedures. A company dormant and unfiled for several years is a longer and more expensive engagement than one closed the year it stopped trading.
Our fee is fixed and agreed in writing against a defined scope — the number of visas to cancel, the state of the accounts, the clearances required and the years to be brought current — never to the value of the company or its assets. Government fees, accrued penalties, employee entitlements and creditor settlements are shown separately at cost.
We will not quote a closure fee before seeing the record, because until the record is retrieved nobody knows what is being closed.
Closure Cost CalculatorWhere it Goes Wrong
The most common file we see, and the most expensive to reverse. Obligations continued, nobody was receiving the correspondence, and the position surfaces years later — usually when the same shareholder tries to incorporate again.
Employees resigned, dependants left, and nobody closed the immigration file. The establishment card cannot be cancelled while sponsorships sit under it. Closure stops here until each is resolved individually.
A live account with a balance, a standing instruction or an unpaid facility blocks the closure. The bank’s closure letter is a required clearance, not an optional tidy-up.
The liquidator’s report has to be prepared from something. Where years of records do not exist, they must be reconstructed first — which turns a closure engagement into an accounting engagement.
Ceasing to trade does not end a tax registration. It ends by deregistration, not inactivity. An open registration with unfiled returns surfaces long after the owner believed the company was finished.
The process ran, the licence stopped appearing, and nobody obtained the closing document. Without it there is no proof the entity was closed properly — and the burden falls on the shareholder years later.
Questions
What happens if I just stop renewing the licence?
The company continues to exist on the register. Obligations and penalties keep accruing, sponsored visas stay live, tax registrations stay open, and the exposure attaches to the shareholders and manager of record. Abandonment is the most expensive way to close a company.
How long does liquidation take?
Longer than formation. The determining factors are the creditor notice period, the time to cancel every visa and the establishment card, and how far behind the accounts are. We give a timetable after the position assessment, not before.
Can I close a company with debts?
The process is designed for it — creditors are notified and claims are dealt with. What cannot be done is deregistering while liabilities are ignored. Where a company is insolvent rather than merely unprofitable, that is a different route and we will say so at assessment.
Do I have to cancel my own residence visa?
If your residence is sponsored by the company being closed, yes. Planning where your status goes next belongs at the start of the closure, not at the end.
Is the company already deregistered if the licence expired years ago?
Almost certainly not. Expiry and deregistration are different events. We check the actual registry position, which regularly differs from what the owner has assumed.
Can you close a company where a shareholder has died or cannot be found?
Sometimes, but not administratively. Entitlement to the shares or authority to act must be established first, which is a legal process. It changes both route and cost.
Will closing the company clear the fines?
No. Accrued penalties are settled as part of the closure, not extinguished by it. What closure stops is the accrual continuing.