Use case · Liquidator

The takeover by a court-appointed liquidator

You are a court-appointed administrator or liquidator. You handle dozens of cases per year. For each one, the digital estate raises the same questions and risks the same dispersion. Here is how Archivum plugs in as an operational partner — with no surcharge linked to the proceedings.

The setting

Each court-ordered liquidation case you handle resembles the others: declaration of suspension of payments or summons, opening judgment, asset inventory, hearing of the directors, realisation of assets, payment ranking, closure. On the tangible-asset side the procedure is well tooled — you work with auctioneers, experts, specialised sub-contractors.

On the digital side, you improvise. The source code of a SaaS, the customer base of an e-commerce, the portfolio of a creative agency, the mailboxes of a regular trading company — assets whose value is real but whose realisation, preservation or destruction mechanics are not standardised. Meanwhile, cloud subscriptions get cut off, certificates expire, domain names drift into pending state, incoming mail bounces silently.

Archivum is built to be your recurring counterpart on this dimension. The template contract is tripartite (former directors, administrator, Archivum). The pricing grid does not factor in the procedural context, so no debate about "emergency surcharges". And the operational sequence is designed to fold into the standard steps of collective proceedings.

Standardising archive intake for companies in proceedings is not a comfort — it is what prevents residual value from burning off while you settle the liabilities.
  • 30+ cases / year
  • 8 months average duration
  • €0 emergency surcharge
  • 3 contract parties

What is at stake, from your seat

  • The missing digital inventory. The asset inventory (article L.622-6 of the French Commercial Code) rarely lists cloud accounts, Git repositories, CRM bases, domain names. Without a structured listing, you discover those assets through incoming mail — often too late to act.
  • Residual GDPR obligations. As long as the data exist, a controller exists. Without organised transfer, former directors carry it personally (see GDPR after cessation) — which can complicate your relationship with them during the proceedings.
  • Evidence for creditors. Demonstrating the existence and value of intangible assets (code, bases, content) to the creditors' committee requires a dated, indexed, verifiable deposit. An informal archive on an external drive does not have that evidentiary value.
  • Post-closure mail. Critical mailboxes receive correspondence for years after closure — summonses, formal notices, administrative requests. Without a relay, you ignore them without knowing it.
  • The recurring workload. If you reinvent the mechanics for each case, it costs you several days per file. With a tooled recurring partner, it is a few hours per case — the difference is measurable on a thirty-case-per-year portfolio.

How Archivum operates for you

  1. 1

    Master agreement (one-off)

    Master agreement signed between your firm and Archivum, setting the tripartite template contract, the pricing grid, the billing terms (along the proceedings or at closure), and the templates for documents to be filed with the court. Once the master is signed, each case is documented in a few pages.

  2. 2

    Digital inventory of the case

    At the directors' hearing, or shortly after, we coordinate with them the listing of digital assets: hosting providers, registrar, SaaS accounts, Git repositories, mailboxes, databases. This list complements the asset inventory under the Commercial Code.

  3. 3

    Secure deposit on sovereign infrastructure

    Extraction and encryption of the assets on sovereign French infrastructure (Scaleway). Cryptographic fingerprint of each item. A dated summary is delivered to your firm and filed with the proceedings dossier.

  4. 4

    Static migration of the site (if relevant)

    For companies whose site is an identifiable asset — e-commerce, agency, media — switch to static. The site stays online in read-only mode during the proceedings, which avoids negative reviews from former customers and preserves residual value for a possible sale.

  5. 5

    Email takeover and supervised access

    Critical mailboxes in inbound-only mode. You (as administrator) receive supervised access to incoming mail during the proceedings: every consultation is logged. This access expires at closure, unless explicit extension.

  6. 6

    Post-closure conservation, end-of-period arbitration

    Beyond closure, the former directors or successors listed in the contract retain residual access. Three months before the contractual deadline, they decide collegially between extension, deletion and transfer — see end-of-period arbitration.

Five years on

The former directors named in the contract — or their successors if one of them is no longer able to decide — settle the matter collegially.

Deletion

Secure destruction. Certificate issued to the former directors; attests before the data-protection authority of the end of residual GDPR processing.

Transfer to the trustee

Archivum inherits contractually the residual assets (domain, abandoned code, content). Operating terms set in the individual contract.

How much it costs

For a typical case — startup or SMB in court-ordered liquidation, ~250 GB of archives, a marketing site, four mailboxes — over five years, the order of magnitude is a few thousand euros per year, with no surcharge linked to the proceedings. For firms handling more than ten cases per year, the partnership framework allows a negotiated fixed-price billing. No emergency or time-and- materials billing.

Set up the partnership

If you regularly handle collective-proceedings cases, the most efficient path is to talk for an hour to set the framework. We walk you through the template contract, the pricing grid, and the templates for documents to file with the court. Once the framework is signed, each case is operational in a few hours.

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