Closing a company in Israel: routes, rules and your records

How to close a company in Israel

Voluntary liquidation is used when the company can pay its debts and chooses to liquidate. The process has two stages, a trustee is appointed, and a notice is published in the official gazette. Creditors may file claims with the trustee for 90 days. A company with no assets, no debts, no open court case, and no administrative enforcement can use the expedited voluntary path instead. Court liquidation is used when a court conducts the liquidation. This is separate from a voluntary liquidation at the Companies Registrar. A foreign company registered in Israel uses removal from the register rather than either of these paths.

Dissolution and liquidation routes

The registry

The Companies Registrar. The Corporations Authority says a private company on the companies-unit register can use a voluntary liquidation if it can pay its debts, with a trustee and a notice in the official gazette, or an expedited voluntary liquidation if it has no assets, no debts, no open court case, and no administrative enforcement. A court liquidation is conducted in court. Creditors may file claims with the trustee for 90 days in a voluntary liquidation. A foreign company uses removal from the register.

Employees: consultation and notice

The Advance Notice for Dismissal and Resignation Law. An employer who wants to dismiss an employee gives written notice stating the day the notice is given and the day the dismissal takes effect. A salaried employee gets one day of notice for each month during the first six months, six days plus two and a half days for each month from the seventh month through the end of the first year, and one month after the first year. If the employer dismisses the employee without that notice, the employer pays the employee's ordinary wages for the period the notice did not cover.

For staff who worked in a US state, read final paycheck and WARN rules by state.

Data protection when the company closes

The Privacy Protection Law. Personal information is any datum concerning an identified person or a person who can be identified. A person can be identified with reasonable effort, directly or indirectly, including by a name, an identity number, a biometric identifier, location data, an online identifier, or one or more details of that person's physical, health, economic, social, or cultural condition.

The Privacy Protection Authority. The Privacy Protection Law defines the Authority as the Privacy Protection Authority in the Ministry of Justice. It was established and operates under the government decisions the statute lists. The head of the Authority is the person the government appoints, by a notice in the official gazette.

The statute's test is whether a person can be identified with reasonable effort, directly or indirectly. That includes identification by a name, an identity number, a biometric identifier, location data, an online identifier, or one or more details of the person's physical, health, economic, social, or cultural condition. A datum that still meets that test is personal information.

Records to keep

Section 173 of the Companies Law. Financial statements of a company that is not a reporting corporation are kept at the registered office for at least seven years from the date they were prepared, for the directors and the shareholders to inspect. When a voluntary liquidation ends, the final meeting decides how the company documents and the trustee's documents are kept after dissolution, for not less than seven years. If the meeting does not decide, the trustee, or a person the trustee authorizes, keeps them for seven years from the dissolution.

What this means for a data license

You give the data partner the right to use your records, with personal details removed, for AI research. Personal details are removed before anything leaves your company. Customer and staff details are never shared. You approve each system before anything is shared. To train and test AI that helps people do their jobs. Never for marketing, and never sold as contact lists. You keep ownership of your data, and full use of it in your business. You agree not to license the same records to anyone else. You sign an NDA and the licensing agreement, directly with the data partner, not with Vetrix. The partner is a US-based AI data company. We tell you the data partner's name before you sign. Read what is shared and what is removed, and read the license terms, before you decide.

You need at least 30 staff at peak, or 25 if most of your staff are in the US, and at least 2 years of records.

Related

• Closing a company by country

  Dissolution or liquidation route, registry, employee notice, and data-protection authority by country.

• Winding down

  Order of operations to wind down a company, from approval through taxes and dissolution.

• Netherlands

  The trade register is the registry. One route is Turbo liquidation.

• Nigeria

  Corporate Affairs Commission is the registry. One route is Striking off.

• Poland

  The National Court Register is the registry. One route is Shareholder resolution.

• What's shared

  Which records can be licensed, which details never leave, and what you approve.

• Systems

  What common business tools do to company data after you cancel, including each vendor deletion window.

Sources

1. Israel Corporations Authority. Company liquidation routes.
2. The Knesset. Privacy Protection Law, 5741-1981.
3. The Knesset. Advance Notice for Dismissal and Resignation Law, 5761-2001.
4. Israel Securities Authority. Companies Law, 5759-1999, sections 173 and 342לט.