this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
597 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
69999 readers
5454 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If the new owners purchased the assets, name, and technology and not the company itself, then it's beholden on the remains of the old company to honour the deal... Good luck with that.
Except what you're describing doesn't make sense. If the new owners purchased all of those things, then in reality they purchased the company. Courts are very likely to agree on this. It looks like a company-wide sale, therefore it probably is, even if someone tries to add a line saying "we aren't liable".
But imagine someone could "sell everything other than the liability". In such a case, the seller would be putting themselves on the hook to pay outstanding debts (i.e., the seller would be liable). And we know they have money -- they just sold the thing. So then the seller would pay... But they know that in advance, so they would not agree to such a sale in the first place, unless they were planning to steal that money through creative accounting of some kind... But both parties know all of that that in advance, so they would both be acting fraudulently.
Which is a problem of the legal system around it.
Within most(or all) EU countries this would count as a continuation of business and all previous liabilities (e.g. employees contracts, customers contracts, etc.) would need to be honored.
Why it is done this way? To prevent people from doing exact that.
How many people start companies, rack up a bunch of debt, then create another company that buys everything except the debt?
This is the exact reason GM still exists.
NOW you're getting it.