Liquidation is the most complete form of corporate dissolution. The company ceases to exist. Its assets are sold. Its contracts are terminated. Its employees are dismissed. Its name is removed from the register. What was once a going concern becomes a distribution of proceeds.
The word itself is telling. Assets are "liquidated" — turned into liquid form, into cash. The solidity of the corporation — its buildings, its machinery, its intellectual property, its workforce — is dissolved into money. The money is then distributed to creditors and shareholders according to a statutory waterfall: secured creditors first, then preferential creditors, then unsecured creditors, and finally shareholders, who typically receive nothing.
Liquidation is dissolution without remainder. Unlike bankruptcy reorganization, there is no surviving entity. Unlike a takeover, there is no acquiring company. The corporation simply ends. Its dissolution is absolute.
And yet something always remains. The assets continue to exist — the building is occupied by a new tenant, the machinery is operated by a new owner. The employees find new jobs. The brand may be purchased and revived. The dissolution is total in law but partial in fact. Nothing disappears; everything is redistributed.