Report · One-off

How Latvian Companies End

The register ended 6,525 limited companies in 2025. 42.1% had filed no accounts for the two years before, 46.1% were still filing, 3.9% ended after insolvency proceedings and 4.8% merged into another company. Across the ten years from 2016, 117,372 companies ended and 65.0% had gone quiet first.

What Does the Latvian Register Record When a Company Ends?

The date and one letter: L for liquidated or struck off, R for reorganised into another company. It does not record why. The liquidation file does name a reason, a decision of the owners, the tax authority, the Register or a court, but only while the process is open, and the row goes when the company does.

So this report reads an ending three ways and keeps them apart: what the records show about every company that ended since 2016, the stated reason for processes followed from an archived copy of the liquidation file, and the processes open today.

The company survival report counts every ending as a company gone. This one splits them.

Had Most Latvian Companies Stopped Filing Before They Ended?

Most had. Across the ten years from 2016, 65.0% of the 117,372 limited companies that ended had filed no accounts for the two years before. The share was 54.0% in 2016, peaked at 80.7% in 2018 and was 42.1% in 2025.

The share still filing accounts when they ended rose from 31.2% to 46.1%. That fits a backlog of dormant companies being cleared: once it thins, more of what ends had still been filing accounts.

Why Did So Many Latvian Companies End in 2019?

The register does not say. Much of 2019 happened on two dates: 6,641 companies ended on 14 January 2019 and 3,398 on 13 February 2019, 45.7% of the year’s liquidations and removals. Endings in those numbers on single days look like batch removals rather than thousands of owners deciding at once.

The busiest years were 2017 (14,200), 2018 (18,962), 2019 (22,261). One power often linked to the period, removing a company that has not disclosed its beneficial owners, only took effect on 29 June 2019 and then concerned about 900 companies, according to NJORD Law Firm, so it does not explain January and February.

How Many Latvian Companies End in Insolvency?

Only 3.9% of the companies that ended in 2025 had been through insolvency proceedings, against 11.6% in 2016. Merging into another company is about as rare: 2,744 companies since 2016, 2,669 of them absorbed by acquisition. Far more companies are left to go quiet and are removed than are taken through insolvency.

How Old Are Latvian Companies When They End?

The median company that ended in 2025 was 8.1 years old, and 29.8% of the companies liquidated or struck off were under five. It depends on how it ended: from 2020 to 2025, companies that stopped filing first ended at a median 7.2 years, and those that went through insolvency at 10.4 years.

Companies still filing ended at a median 8.1 years, and those that merged at 11.6 years.

What Did Latvian Companies Look Like Before They Ended?

Of the 13,972 companies liquidated or struck off in 2024 and 2025, 51.3% had filed no accounts for the two years before, and a further 24.4% reported no turnover in their last accounts. Only 71 had turned over EUR 1M or more.

Among those whose last accounts gave a headcount, 45.2% had no employees and 166 had ten or more.

They were also more often on reduced capital. Of the SIA that ended after 30 April 2025, when an archived copy of the capital file was taken, 37.5% had capital below EUR 2,800 and 14.9% a single euro, against 30.4% and 11.3% of the SIA still registered. The share capital report has the register as a whole.

How Long Does a Company Liquidation Take in Latvia?

It depends on who started it. Where the tax authority had ended a company’s activity, 58.1% were gone by 4 September 2026, at a median 63 days from the decision; where the Register had, 64.0%, at 37 days. Only 22.5% of liquidations the owners decided had finished, at a median 342 days.

Those figures follow the 6,001 limited companies with a process open, and its stated reason, in an archived copy of the liquidation file with changes to 17 April 2025. Of liquidations ordered by a court, 2.5% had ended. For an owner winding up a company, the liquidation guide sets out the steps.

That window explains only part of what ended since. Of the 6,493 companies liquidated or struck off after the copy was taken, 1,520 had a process open in it and 907 more had their economic activity suspended by the tax authority. The other 4,066 had neither, and for them the register keeps no reason.

How Many Latvian Liquidations Are Still Open?

5,595 limited companies, 4.0% of those registered, have a liquidation or termination open, and most are not recent. Liquidations decided by the owners have been open a median 6.5 years, and 67.4% for more than three years. The Register’s own terminations are the exception, open a median 38 days.

Liquidations ordered by a court have been open a median 15.7 years. A further 7,105 registered companies have a suspension of economic activity on record.

Are Latvian Companies That Stop Filing Removed From the Register?

Eventually, but slowly. Of the limited companies registered by 2020 and still on the register at the end of 2023, 10,265 had filed no accounts for 2021 or 2022. By 4 September 2026, 43.2% of them had ended, against 9.0% of the 99,388 that had filed.

The rest are still registered: 5,832 companies, 4,018 of them already in a liquidation or termination or with their activity suspended.

The activity gap report counts 38,889 registered companies that show no sign of trading, 13,914 of them with no recent accounts at all, and 29.6% of those already winding down.

How Many Startups on This Map Are Being Liquidated?

Of the 597 startups and scaleups on this map, fewer than 20 have a liquidation or termination open, against 4.0% of registered companies, too few to give a rate. The map lists companies that operate, so it cannot say how startups end; that needs endings the map has watched happen, which will take years.

What Can Latvian Company Endings Data Not Tell You?

Why most companies ended, since the stated reason is kept only while a process is open; whether a quiet company had stopped trading or only stopped filing; which companies moved abroad, since re-registering elsewhere ends a Latvian company like any other; and anything about sole traders and partnerships, which are not counted.

• Why most companies ended. The stated reason is kept only while a process is open, so it is known for the window above and nowhere else.
• Whether a quiet company had stopped trading. A company can trade without filing accounts, for a while. What the register shows is that it stopped filing.
• Companies that moved abroad. A company that re-registers in another country ends in Latvia as any other does, and nothing in the open data marks it.
• Sole traders and partnerships. Only SIA and AS are counted.

Method

• How it ended. Merged: register code R. Insolvency: insolvency proceedings started on or before the ending. Before its first accounts were due: no accounts on file and under 18 months old. Stopped filing first: no accounts for any financial year from 2 years before the ending. Still filing: everything else. Each company falls in the first that applies.
• Stated reason. Read from the grounds text of each liquidation row: a decision of the owners, the tax authority, the Register’s state notary, or a court. A company with more than one row is counted by the one that started first.
• Archived files. The liquidation and suspension files captured by the Internet Archive on 21 April 2025, and the capital file on 2 May 2025. The compute checks each is complete before using it.
• Withheld figures. A count from 1 to 19 is shown as fewer than 20, and no share or median is published over fewer than 200 companies or where its count is withheld.

Definitions are frozen at version 4. The full set is on the methodology page.

Sources

• Uzņēmumu reģistrs open data, the company register, and its liquidation, insolvency, reorganisation and suspension records. Extract of 4 September 2026.
• Uzņēmumu reģistrs, annual report financial data. Extract of 7 September 2026.
• Internet Archive copies of the liquidation, suspension and capital files.
• NJORD Law Firm, companies that failed to disclose their beneficiaries will be excluded, 7 August 2019.