The following scenario is unusual but not unheard of.
A business operates in a non-protected sector, i.e. anyone with capital (substantial ~ €1.25 million) and requisite expertise may enter that sphere. Services offered by the business are toward small and medium manufacturers in that region for whom the outlay of equipment and expert staff of their own would be prohibitive compared to the cost of outsourcing it. Most client manufacturers obtain work done on a monthly, weekly or daily basis.
The 100% owner serves notice to the employees (20 professionals + 10 support staff) that he is to dissolve the business and pay them statutory redundancy. The owner rejects offers on the part of the employees en bloc to buy out the firm as a going concern; the putative buyout being funded by the company's present banks - which are also the personal banks for most of the employees' mortgages, pensions, life insurances, car-loans, etc - which see the business' revenue as liquid enough. This rejection is regardless of whether a new premises is found by the employees (effectively a bid for the company's equipment alone), so enabling the business owner to sell off the building currently housing the business. The dissolving owner likewise refuses to sell the business to rival companies in that region on the basis that the new owner retain most of the current staff complement. The owner's personal wealth and total ownership of the business allows him to make such a financially wasteful decision.
Theoretically, the existing employees could seek to buy equipment themselves to relaunch a new company. Yet in practice such equipment is highly specialized and only supplied months after an order is submitted - by which time the company's clientele would have long defected to rival service companies due to their immediate need to obtain the services. Moreover, with no ongoing business revenues after the old business' dissolution and with no more personal security than their own partly-owned homes and their modest redundancy payments, the employees en bloc would have very low borrowability status in the eyes of banks.
Do the employees en bloc have any legal case upon which to injunct the owner to stall the dissolution of the company ?
Can a court rule in such circumstances - where the employees face a fearful future of losing their jobs, homes and family security - that the owner be compelled to sell the business at fair market value to (any or all of) the employees in order to prevent totally unnecessary hardship inflicted by an owner simply because he can afford to do so ?
A business operates in a non-protected sector, i.e. anyone with capital (substantial ~ €1.25 million) and requisite expertise may enter that sphere. Services offered by the business are toward small and medium manufacturers in that region for whom the outlay of equipment and expert staff of their own would be prohibitive compared to the cost of outsourcing it. Most client manufacturers obtain work done on a monthly, weekly or daily basis.
The 100% owner serves notice to the employees (20 professionals + 10 support staff) that he is to dissolve the business and pay them statutory redundancy. The owner rejects offers on the part of the employees en bloc to buy out the firm as a going concern; the putative buyout being funded by the company's present banks - which are also the personal banks for most of the employees' mortgages, pensions, life insurances, car-loans, etc - which see the business' revenue as liquid enough. This rejection is regardless of whether a new premises is found by the employees (effectively a bid for the company's equipment alone), so enabling the business owner to sell off the building currently housing the business. The dissolving owner likewise refuses to sell the business to rival companies in that region on the basis that the new owner retain most of the current staff complement. The owner's personal wealth and total ownership of the business allows him to make such a financially wasteful decision.
Theoretically, the existing employees could seek to buy equipment themselves to relaunch a new company. Yet in practice such equipment is highly specialized and only supplied months after an order is submitted - by which time the company's clientele would have long defected to rival service companies due to their immediate need to obtain the services. Moreover, with no ongoing business revenues after the old business' dissolution and with no more personal security than their own partly-owned homes and their modest redundancy payments, the employees en bloc would have very low borrowability status in the eyes of banks.
Do the employees en bloc have any legal case upon which to injunct the owner to stall the dissolution of the company ?
Can a court rule in such circumstances - where the employees face a fearful future of losing their jobs, homes and family security - that the owner be compelled to sell the business at fair market value to (any or all of) the employees in order to prevent totally unnecessary hardship inflicted by an owner simply because he can afford to do so ?