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Can an insolvency administrator sell a company's data?

6 November 2026 · 4 min read

Insolvency administrators are used to selling property: vehicles, equipment, stock, real estate, sometimes trademarks or domain names. The company's working data rarely comes up. Can the code, the tickets and years of project history be sold like any other asset? In most cases, yes, as long as a few conditions are met.

Data is part of what the company owns

What a company created in its own work usually belongs to the company: the software its developers wrote, its internal documentation, its project plans, its support knowledge. Its rights to this material are property of the company, and in insolvency they are managed by the administrator like any other property.

So the question is usually not whether the data can be sold at all, but which parts of it can be offered, and in what form.

Three questions to answer first

Before any data is offered to a buyer, three things need to be clear.

1. Does the company actually hold the rights?

Most of a company's own work does belong to the company, but not everything it stored does:

• Its own code and documents: usually the company's, if they were created by employees as part of their work.
• Work done for clients: contracts sometimes transfer the rights to the client. Such material is left out unless the contract allows its use.
• Third-party material: licensed software, other companies' documents and confidential material received under an NDA are left out.

2. Is there personal data in it?

Almost certainly. E-mail, chat, tickets and Git history are full of names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers. Under the GDPR this data cannot simply be handed to a buyer. The company remains responsible for it as the data controller, and the administrator acts on its behalf.

The solution is to remove personal data before anyone outside sees the material. The buyer receives only an anonymised dataset. You can read how that works in our article on how anonymisation works.

3. Is anything confidential or sensitive?

Some material is left out entirely, not just cleaned: HR files, payroll, health information, passwords and access keys, and anything covered by a client's confidentiality clause.

Selling it versus licensing it

There are two ways to turn data into money:

• Selling the archive as it is, for example together with the business or to a competitor. This rarely works for a closing company, and the personal data inside makes it difficult.
• Licensing an anonymised dataset to AI companies that use it to train their systems. The buyer receives only the cleaned data, under a licence that forbids any attempt to re-identify people.

Datobex uses the second model. The proceeds go into the insolvency estate like the proceeds of any other asset, and from there to the creditors.

How the procedure works

The data is handled within the normal insolvency procedure, with the administrator in charge at every step:

1. A short questionnaire. The administrator, or former management, tells us which systems the company used.
2. A test of demand. We show buyers an anonymous one-page description, with no company name and no data, to find out whether there is interest and at what price.
3. The agreements. If there is interest, a sale agreement and a GDPR data-processing agreement are signed. The sale follows the normal procedure with the administrator.
4. Copying and anonymisation. The data is copied and anonymised inside the EU. Nobody outside sees the raw material.
5. Licensing and payment. The buyer checks samples, signs the licence and pays. The estate receives 70%, and raw copies are then deleted.

The estate pays nothing at any stage. If there is no buyer, there is no cost.

What about liquidation?

The same principles apply when a company is liquidated rather than declared insolvent. The liquidator, who is often the owner or a board member, makes the decisions, and the proceeds go to the owners once the company's debts are settled.

In short

An administrator can usually turn a company's data into value for creditors, as long as:

• only material the company holds the rights to is included;
• personal data is removed before anyone outside sees it;
• sensitive and confidential material is left out;
• everything goes through written agreements and the normal procedure.

The biggest risk is time. Cloud services delete data within weeks or months after payments stop, so it is worth asking early. Our article on what happens to a company's data in insolvency has a checklist for the first weeks.

This article is general information, not legal advice.