Receivership
What is receivership, and how is it different from liquidation?
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BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
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Receivership is the appointment, usually by a secured lender under its security agreement, of a receiver to take control of the assets the security covers and realise them to repay that lender. The receiver acts for the secured creditor rather than for creditors generally, and may trade the business on for a time if a going-concern sale will recover more than a break-up. It differs from liquidation, which ends the company for the benefit of all its creditors, and from administration, which holds creditors off while the company's future is decided.
BASIS Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.
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