Firm that went bust owing £650k to HMRC offers staff Las Vegas trip after being bought by ex-owner
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/15/bust-premier-group-recruitment-hmrc-las-vegas-staff-trip-andrew-woosnam
Posted by radiant_0wl
Firm that went bust owing £650k to HMRC offers staff Las Vegas trip after being bought by ex-owner
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/15/bust-premier-group-recruitment-hmrc-las-vegas-staff-trip-andrew-woosnam
Posted by radiant_0wl
4 Comments
Sadly this is an abused loophole. A former employer did this (making loads of staff redundant at the time and to get rid of nearly a million in debt) and simply transferred their IP and remaining staff over to a new business on the SAME day.
I have no idea why it’s legal, I reported it and was told they didn’t do anything illegal.
This is an abuse that happens because our laws were written for the industrial era when you had a factory with tangible assets.
This recruitment company is essentially entirely intangible. Everything worth having in the firm is in the minds of the staff: lists of customers and potential people they can hire. The sort of thing that is easily copied and easily wanders the line between the company’s systems and the individual’s.
Even paying for the assets is kinda interesting, to could just start a new one and say its a new business, and simply contact all your customers again.
Had a client do this, owing £35M.
They had the front to try and set up again just inserting the word “contracts” between their original name and the word Limited.
Happily their peers in the industry told them where to go (primarily because no-one would give them an account with any kind of credit exposure).
I do ‘phoenixing checks’ as part of my job; I see this stuff semi-regularly.
It’s not a get out of jail free card – it basically wrecks your creditworthiness (obviously!)
If you apply to my company (B2B financial services) and we see that half your directors were associated with a recently liquidated insolvent company doing exactly the same business, 95% of the time you’re getting rejected.