Data
Company closures outside the US
Last updated October 25, 2026
Next update November 2026
Many countries publish their company registers as open files. We read five of them for the companies that ended, or are ending: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore, Australia and France. 4,971 of those companies sit in our database. This page counts them by registry, by what the registry says happened, by year, by size where the registry has it, and by industry. It also shows how many we have qualified to contact.
A registry status is a legal fact, not a judgement about the records. A dissolved holding company may never have had a desk. A French manufacturer with 200 staff in liquidation may have twenty years of job files. The counts say where to look, not what anyone will find.
By registry and status
Each registry has its own words for an ending. We split them into two kinds: the company has ended (dissolved, deregistered, or a court closed the liquidation), or a procedure is under way (liquidation, administration, receivership or judicial management).
| Registry | Country | Companies | Ended | Procedure under way |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Companies House | United Kingdom | 1,024 | 0 | 1,024 |
| CRO | Ireland | 1,343 | 882 | 461 |
| ACRA | Singapore | 1,224 | 482 | 742 |
| ASIC | Australia | 841 | 430 | 411 |
| BODACC, with Sirene | France | 539 | 1 | 538 |
| All five | 4,971 | 1,795 | 3,176 |
The UK snapshot lists live register entries only, so a dissolved UK company never reaches this table. Its 1,024 are 641 in liquidation and 383 in administration, 30 of those with a receiver as well.
Ireland’s 461 are in liquidation. Singapore’s 742 are 740 in liquidation and 2 under judicial management. Of the 740, 487 are members’ voluntary winding-ups, the route a solvent company takes, and 165 are creditors’ voluntary winding-ups. Australia’s 411 are under external administration.
France is almost all procedure. 367 notices convert an earlier proceeding into judicial liquidation, 112 open one, 29 end a rescue plan and order liquidation, 28 list claims in a liquidation and 2 extend one. One is a court’s closure of a liquidation for lack of assets.
By year
The registries date different events, so each row says which date it counts.
| Registry and event | 2025 | 2026, to date | No date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland, dissolved | 391 | 491 | |
| Ireland, in liquidation | 261 | 200 | |
| Australia, deregistered | 77 | 353 | |
| Australia, in administration | 411 | ||
| France, first notice | 260 | 279 | |
| Singapore, last return | 578 | 113 | |
| UK, last accounts | 47 | 1 |
Ireland’s rows use the dissolution date and the liquidation status date. Australia’s use the deregistration date; external administration carries none. France’s use the first BODACC notice in our window. Singapore’s use the last annual return and the UK’s the date the last accounts were made up.
Singapore’s other 533 filed their last annual return in 2024. The register gives no date for the status change itself. The UK’s other 976 last made up accounts between 2019 and 2024: 60 in 2019, 58 in 2020, 112 in 2021, 203 in 2022, 272 in 2023 and 270 in 2024, plus one with an unreadable date. The year of last accounts is when the company last reported, not when it failed.
Australia’s earliest deregistration in our rows is 14 October 2025. ASIC says the deregistration date is “Available from 11 March 2025”, so the 2025 column covers less than three months of it.
By size, where the registry says
Two registries carry a headcount. Companies House accounts in iXBRL give an average number of employees. INSEE’s Sirene gives a band of salaried staff for each French company.
| UK, average employees | Companies |
|---|---|
| 50 to 99 | 188 |
| 100 to 249 | 194 |
| 250 to 499 | 41 |
| 500 to 999 | 26 |
| 1,000 or more | 18 |
| No figure; medium or group | 557 |
| All | 1,024 |
The average comes from the last accounts. The 467 UK companies with a figure report 110,024 average employees between them. The other 557 are kept on their accounts category alone: 542 file group accounts and 15 medium-sized ones.
| France, Sirene staff band | Companies |
|---|---|
| 50 to 99 | 359 |
| 100 to 199 | 112 |
| 200 to 249 | 13 |
| 250 to 499 | 35 |
| 500 to 999 | 11 |
| 1,000 to 1,999 | 6 |
| 2,000 to 4,999 | 3 |
| All | 539 |
Ireland, Singapore and Australia publish no employee field. There we keep legal forms that larger companies use, and say so on every row.
| Registry | Legal form | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| Ireland | DAC | 999 |
| Ireland | Unlimited (ULC) | 293 |
| Ireland | Public limited (PLC) | 51 |
| Australia | Unlisted public, by shares | 606 |
| Australia | Listed public, by shares | 10 |
| Australia | Registered foreign | 225 |
| Singapore | Private, not exempt | 1,187 |
| Singapore | Public, by shares | 18 |
| Singapore | Public, by guarantee | 9 |
| Singapore | Foreign company branch | 9 |
| Singapore | Unlimited private | 1 |
DAC is Ireland’s designated activity company. “Private, not exempt” means Singapore private companies limited by shares, exempt private companies left out.
By industry section
The UK, Irish and French codes share the same European divisions. Singapore’s SSIC codes are its own; we grouped them by the same two-digit ranges, so read its column as approximate. ASIC publishes no industry.
| Industry section | UK | Ireland | Singapore | France |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Mining | 11 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Manufacturing | 134 | 3 | 31 | 107 |
| Energy, water and waste | 10 | 0 | 7 | 2 |
| Construction | 89 | 6 | 19 | 50 |
| Wholesale and retail | 114 | 8 | 122 | 66 |
| Transport and storage | 29 | 0 | 100 | 73 |
| Accommodation and food | 50 | 1 | 49 | 17 |
| Information and communication | 65 | 149 | 104 | 25 |
| Finance and insurance | 173 | 583 | 518 | 2 |
| Real estate | 13 | 19 | 94 | 0 |
| Professional and technical | 138 | 18 | 105 | 39 |
| Administrative and support | 82 | 57 | 31 | 96 |
| Public admin, education, health | 52 | 11 | 15 | 54 |
| Arts and other services | 30 | 11 | 24 | 7 |
| Dormant or non-trading | 18 | |||
| No code given | 12 | 475 | 0 | 0 |
| All | 1,024 | 1,343 | 1,224 | 539 |
“Wholesale and retail” includes the motor trade; “Professional and technical” includes scientific work.
How many we qualified
Every company outside the US goes through the same check as a US one: a screen on the name and the industry, then a qualification. Our rules put a company with an ended or wound-up status on the closed list. A company in a procedure that can still end in a rescue, with no closure recorded and no headcount to say otherwise, goes on the operating list.
| Registry | Companies | Closed list | Operating list | Held for review | Excluded |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 1,024 | 760 | 139 | 92 | 33 |
| Ireland | 1,343 | 1,250 | 0 | 92 | 1 |
| Singapore | 1,224 | 458 | 711 | 50 | 5 |
| Australia | 841 | 401 | 400 | 37 | 3 |
| France | 539 | 533 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| All five | 4,971 | 3,402 | 1,250 | 277 | 42 |
The two list columns are the qualified companies.
4,652 are qualified, 93.6% of the 4,971. The 277 held back carry a word in the name or industry that a person reads first, such as financial (68), health (43) or credit (32). Of the 42 excluded, 40 failed the industry and name screen, which keeps out hospitals, schools, universities, public bodies, restaurants, franchises, staffing firms and recruiters. Two belong to an enterprise that carries on elsewhere. None of the 4,971 has been contacted yet.
What the tables show, and what they don’t
The UK and France lists are the strongest on size. Every French company had 50 or more salaried staff in Sirene’s band. 467 UK companies reported an average of 50 or more employees. Those are companies where many people did desk work.
Ireland and Singapore lean hard towards finance. 583 of the Irish companies and 518 of the Singapore ones carry a finance code. 448 Irish companies use the catch-all code for other financial services, and 450 Singapore companies a holding-company code. A holding company can end with no staff and no operating records of its own. A legal form is a weak stand-in for a headcount, and these columns show it.
Singapore’s largest group is the members’ voluntary winding-up, the route for a company that can pay its debts. Its work may live on inside a group that kept the records.
Nothing here proves a company kept records worth licensing. A status says the company ended or is ending. It doesn’t say who holds the email archive, or whether the mailboxes were deleted the week the liquidator arrived.
What a buyer looks for, and where micro1 stands
micro1 runs a track for companies that have closed. Its referral page names a “Defunct Company Data Partnership” and says: “We are acquiring data from companies that are no longer operating.” Under company requirements, it lists “30+ employees”, “10+ Countries”, “English” and “All industries”. The page doesn’t say what “10+ Countries” means.
On place, micro1’s data partnerships page answers “Can companies participate from anywhere in the world?” with: “Yes. While the program accepts referrals globally, current demand is strongest for companies based in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. Companies from other regions may still be considered, but selection will depend on the specific needs of active opportunities and customer demand at the time.” It also says: “We’re currently prioritizing US companies, followed by other Western markets.” Our reading: of the five countries on this page, only the United Kingdom is among the three micro1 names, and Ireland, Singapore, Australia and France fall under “Companies from other regions may still be considered”.
Language matters as much as place. micro1 writes: “At this time, we are primarily looking for companies that operate in English and maintain their documentation, workflows, and knowledge bases in English.” That favours the UK, Irish, Singapore and Australian lists. A French company that kept its records in French may find the door narrower.
We refer every company outside the US to micro1, whatever its size. micro1 decides at application. Its payout page asks “Where is your company headquartered?” and “How many years of data do you have?”, with the note “Typically the number of years you’ve been in business”.
What it wants is plain: data that “reflects how work is actually performed within an organization.” The records are de-identified before use. Customer names and payments are never what’s wanted. What’s wanted is how the work was done: the procedures people followed, how a project ran from first email to sign-off, how a support ticket got solved. A buyer licenses records like these to train AI models. Our explainer on what data buyers actually want from a trade business goes through it record by record.
For a company that has closed, who can still sign matters most. Who signs for a company in liquidation or administration is a question for your counsel. Our page for closed companies covers the steps and what the founder keeps. What to export before the accounts are cut off is on what a closing company’s records are worth. micro1’s data partnerships page says: “Companies retain ownership of their underlying data.”
Other public records catch closures in the US. Our count of company dissolutions in two state registries does for Colorado and Connecticut what this page does abroad.
If your company is on one of these registers, our estimate asks five questions and gives you a band; in the first, pick “Outside the US”. It’s ours, not an offer. Who still holds the admin password to the mailboxes?
What is never included
On this page: counts only. No company names, no registry numbers, no addresses, no directors, no office-holders. The registries publish those; we don’t repeat them.
In a licence: micro1’s payout page lists “De-identified before sharing” and says “Personal and identifying information is removed or transformed before your data is shared with third parties”. As our own advice, keep payroll, bank exports, customer payment details, employee medical records and anything a client owns out of any export. How it’s safe sets out what leaves your systems and when. Our page on how de-identification works explains the steps.
Methodology
What is counted. Each number counts companies in our database that one of five collectors created, one row per company. We read the host database with read-only queries on 25 October 2026, between 11:19 and 11:45 UTC. All 4,971 rows were loaded on 16 October 2026. A company first recorded from another source isn’t counted here.
United Kingdom. Companies House publishes a free monthly snapshot of live companies on the register. We read the snapshot of 1 October 2026. A company is kept when its status is liquidation, administration or receivership, its accounts category is full, medium or group, and its last accounts were made up on or after 1 January 2019. Company voluntary arrangements are left out: they are rescues, not closures. For size we read the companies’ own iXBRL accounts in the free Accounts Data Product, fetching only the target companies’ files from each monthly archive. A company stays when its largest average number of employees is 50 or more. Without a figure, it stays only on a medium or group category, marked size unverified. Full accounts alone don’t count, because small companies may file them too. Our collector records the data under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Ireland. The Companies Registration Office publishes its company records daily on data.gov.ie under CC BY 4.0. We keep dissolutions dated from 1 April 2025, the first month the open file carries, and liquidations with a status date from 1 January 2025. Only DACs, PLCs and unlimited companies that have filed accounts are kept. The register has no size field, so the form is the proxy.
Singapore. ACRA publishes its information on corporate entities monthly on data.gov.sg under the Singapore Open Data Licence. We keep local companies and foreign company branches that are dissolved, in liquidation, or under judicial management, with an annual return in 2024 or later. Of the 482 dissolved, most were dissolved after a winding-up, 13 under section 212(1)(d) of the Companies Act, and 7 are foreign company branches the register marks dissolved. Struck-off companies, the administrative route for small dormant ones, are left out. So are exempt private companies, the small owner-run form of at most 20 individual shareholders.
Australia. ASIC publishes its company dataset weekly on data.gov.au under CC BY 3.0 AU. We keep public companies limited by shares, listed or unlisted, and registered foreign companies, the Australian branches of overseas groups. Of those, a company is kept when it is deregistered on or after 11 March 2025 or under external administration. Proprietary, guarantee and home-unit companies are left out.
France. BODACC publishes court notices under the Licence Ouverte. We read its insolvency notices month by month from 1 January 2025, when our window opens; the first notice in our rows was published on 3 January 2025. They are kept to judicial liquidation and closure for lack of assets, companies only. Per company, a closure judgment beats an open liquidation. We join each company to INSEE’s monthly Sirene stock for its band of salaried staff and keep bands of 50 or more. The headcount on the row is the band’s lower bound.
Status, year and industry. The status comes from each registry’s own wording, as recorded when the row was collected. The year columns use the date each registry gives: dissolution, status change or deregistration, or the first BODACC notice. Industry sections group the first two digits of each code, with the leading zeros the registries’ files drop put back (one UK row carries a SIC 2003 code, 74.87, and is placed with professional services): UK SIC 2007, NACE Rev. 2 in Ireland, NAF in France, SSIC in Singapore. UK codes 99999 and 74990 mean dormant or non-trading.
Qualification. The lists and holds are our own pipeline’s statuses at the time of the read. They decide whom we may contact, not what a buyer will accept.
Refresh. The tables are rebuilt monthly from a new read of the database. The next update is due 25 November 2026.
TrustPast
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Sources
- Companies House, Free Company Data Product: the monthly Basic Company Data snapshot (live companies on the register)
- Companies House, Accounts Data Product: monthly files of iXBRL accounts
- data.gov.ie, Company Records (Companies Registration Office, CC BY 4.0, updated daily)
- data.gov.sg, ACRA Information on Corporate Entities (Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, Singapore Open Data Licence, updated monthly)
- data.gov.au, ASIC Company Dataset (Australian Securities and Investments Commission, CC BY 3.0 AU, updated weekly)
- BODACC, annonces commerciales (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales, Licence Ouverte / etalab-2.0)
- data.gouv.fr, Base Sirene des entreprises et de leurs établissements (INSEE, Licence Ouverte 2.0, monthly stock)
- micro1, refer a company: the Defunct Company Data Partnership and its company requirements (micro1.ai)
- micro1, data partnerships: companies from anywhere, English, the data it looks for, ownership (micro1.ai)
- micro1, how much is your data worth: headquarters, years of data, de-identified before sharing (micro1.ai)