phoenixing

1. 1
   verbAustralia

   Present participle and gerund of phoenix.

   Regulators accused the directors of phoenixing the firm, moving its assets to a new company the day before it collapsed.

   By phoenixing the business, the owners left suppliers and tradies unpaid and kept trading under a new name.

   Note

   An Australian business term that borrows the bird rising from its own ashes: the old company is left to burn with its debts while a new one, holding the assets, carries on in its place. The verb takes the company as its object, as in phoenixing the firm, and -ing simply joins phoenix with no change of spelling.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Gerund of phoenix.

   Union leaders called for tougher penalties for phoenixing after another builder collapsed owing money to dozens of tradies.

   The regulator has made phoenixing a priority, warning directors that they can be banned for it.

   Note

   As a noun it names the practice as a whole and usually stands without an article: penalties for phoenixing, a crackdown on phoenixing. In 2019 John Winter, head of Australia's insolvency and turnaround association, said phoenixing had been endemic for decades, and that is its home: the language of insolvency and regulation. The plural phoenixings, for separate cases, is possible but rare.

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