Companies in liquidation in New Zealand this week

63 New Zealand companies had a liquidator appointed and published in the Gazette in the last seven days. Each name links to the official notice, which names the liquidator and tells creditors how to make a claim. If one of them owes you money, the three things worth establishing this week are set out below the list.

Found a customer on this list?

It is a hard way to find out. Plenty of people learn a customer has gone under the same way strangers do, from a notice or the news.

What happens to the money you are owed is largely decided by what was signed before the work started. Most trade creditors are unsecured. So before anything else, there are three things worth establishing this week.

Did anyone give a personal guarantee?

If a director personally guaranteed the account, the money owed can still be pursued through them. A guarantee is a separate promise from a different person, and it does not disappear with the company.

Are you holding any of their property or equipment?

A vehicle in the workshop, or plant on site. The real question underneath it is whether what you are holding actually outranks any security already registered over it, and that depends on the situation.

What will the liquidator do?

There is a process, and the liquidator runs it. They will be in touch with creditors about making a claim, and the notice linked above tells you who they are and how to reach them. This is the part you do not have to chase.

We go through each of these, and the rest of what happens, in your customer has gone into liquidation: what happens to your money.

Follow the liquidation on the Companies Office

Look the company up on the Companies Register by its correct legal name, and follow what is happening through the reports and documents filed there. Then put the director’s name into a director search, to see whether other companies of theirs are also affected. The full creditor lists are not always on the register, so here is where else to look, and how to read the report.

Where does that leave you in the queue?

A liquidator’s report divides creditors into secured and unsecured. Statutory preferences sit ahead of most trade creditors, and after that, it is a queue. Being secured is what changes where you stand.

What is left after the assets are realised goes into a pool. What any one creditor receives depends on what is actually in it, where they sit in the queue, and how many others are in it. Sometimes a small amount. Often nothing. There is no fixed proportion, which is why a figure is no help: it invites you to plan around a number that does not exist.

What can you still do about everyone else?

A security interest cannot be registered on the PPSR after the fact. For this customer, the window closed before you knew there was one, and that is the part that stings. It is also why almost everything useful from here points at the customers you still have.

• Check what is actually signed, across every account. Security exists when the customer has signed it and it has then been registered on the Personal Property Securities Register, within a limited window after signing (check the current requirement). Security that was never signed, or signed and never registered in time, is security you do not have.
• Run a health check across your customers first. A credit check affects the customer’s credit score and leaves a footprint. A health check gives you a current read on where each customer sits, without that. Centrix, Equifax and others offer both. If you have twenty-five accounts to review, it shows you where the risk is without touching twenty-five relationships.
• Stop providing so much credit. It is the move that actually changes the arithmetic.

The arithmetic is worth doing. At a 10% net margin, replacing $10,000 lost to one customer takes $100,000 of new sales, and the wages, materials and site costs for the original job were already paid before the money failed to arrive.

If it is a customer who is still trading but has stopped paying you, start with what to do when you are not being paid for work you have done.

This page describes the process in general terms, from our own research and experience. Do your own research, and get legal advice for your own situation.