How long it takes to delete a Greek company from GEMI: 13.6 months after the last revenue

A company that stops working does not leave GEMI, the General Commercial Registry of Greece, right away: from the end of its last fiscal year with revenue to its deletion, the median time is 13.6 months. For one in four it is more than two years, and for 6.8% more than five. The deletion itself takes a median of 22 days from the dissolution notice.

I took the 8,108 IKEs (private companies), SAs and EPEs (limited liability companies) deleted from GEMI from October 2025 to September 2026. For each one I looked at all its financial statements, to find the last year it had revenue. For the 3,793 that once had revenue, that year is certain.

Months from the last revenue to deletion

The months count from the end of the fiscal year, usually 31 December. Within that last year the company may have stopped in any month, so the real time is up to 12 months longer. The 13.6 is a lower bound.

43.6% were deleted within one year of the end of their last fiscal year with revenue. 24.8%, that is 940 companies, stayed in the registry for more than two years. 257 stayed for more than five.

EPEs take the longest to be deleted.

Financial statements with no revenue

A company that has not been deleted must file financial statements every year, even with zero revenue. Of the 3,793, 1,116 (29.4%) filed at least one statement with zero revenue after their last revenue. 99 filed six or more.

Companies that never worked

1,459 of the deleted companies had no revenue in any financial statement, from incorporation to deletion. They stayed in GEMI for a median of 4 years. 394 of them, more than one in four, have their main activity code (KAD, the Greek extension of NACE) in energy. 223 are in KAD 35.11, electricity generation, where companies that run a single solar plant are also registered.

The delay is before the dissolution

The formal process is not slow. Once the partners decide the dissolution and GEMI publishes it, the deletion follows in a median of 22 days, for the 7,588 deleted companies with a dissolution notice. The time is lost before the decision: in the months or years when the company does not work, but nobody closes it.

Companies that never close are not in this sample, because it counts only deleted ones. Active companies with no activity are in the article on zombie companies, and active IKEs with no revenue in their last financial statement are in the search.

Methodology

The sample is all IKEs, SAs and EPEs with a deletion date from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 in the BizList.gr database, without branches. OE and EE (general and limited partnerships) do not publish financial statements and are left out. Revenue comes from the financial statements filed in GEMI, retrieved 26 October 2026. Before the measurement I also read more than 2,500 statements that were missing from the database or had blank revenue.

The last fiscal year with revenue is the last one with revenue above zero. With a €10,000 threshold the median becomes 14.9 months. A company counts only when every statement after its last revenue has been read. 564 with a statement that was not read with confidence were left out. Among those added with the latest readings, more than two years was more common, so the 564 probably lean towards long gaps: with them included, the share above two years is between 21.6% and 34.5%. The median becomes at most 15.4 months if all of them had more than two years. Also left out were 913 companies with no financial statement in GEMI, 274 of them incorporated before 2025, and 1,379 with no revenue in what was read but with statements missing.