| Will Walker | Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 08:40 pm 
Right now, according to the record-keeping functions of the game, when a public corporation is closed, the process is different from a private or (I assume) state-owned corp closing.
When the latter closes, the inventory is liquidated on the market, and then either A) the bonds are repaid (with penalty I assume) from the liquidated assets, the residual of which is inherited by the owner; or B) the cash is then transferred to the owner, as is the debt. (I suspect it's B.)
When a public corporation closes, however, neither the cash, nor the debt, transfers to either the controlling player, nor the shareholders. I recently closed two unprofitable public corporations, one with 28B in cash and 90B in debt (I owned 70% of it) and one with cash but no debt (I owned 27% of it).
I received no cash and no debt.
I propose the following alternative system:
Step 1) Liquidate the inventory on the global market.
Step 2) If the resulting pile of cash is sufficient to pay off the corporation's debts, the loans are repaid - including penalties.
Step 3) If all loans have been repaid in Step 2, then the remaining cash is paid out to shareholders according to the number of shares they own.
Step 4) Delete shareholder shares.
Using the examples above, assume the first corporation has 50B in inventory/supplies and the second has 40B of the same.
Company 1 liquidates as follows:
Inventory sold for 50B which is added to the existing 28B to leave a cash pile of 78B.
78B in cash is less than 90B in debt, debts are not repaid, they go to debt heaven or whatever.
Shares are deleted, no payout to shareholders, they had no equity.
(Continued) |
| Will Walker | Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 08:43 pm
Corporation 2 liquidates as follows:
Inventory is liquidated for 40B which is added to existing 8B in cash, total of 48B.
No debt to repay so all 48B of that goes to shareholders as liquidated equity.
I own 27% of the shares, so I receive 27% of 48B = 12.96B.
Someone else, who owns 10% of the shares gets 4.8B, and so on until all shareholders have been paid.
Delete the shares.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT CHANGE:
As it stands right now, a malevolent player can buy corporations and close them, incurring only the losses of the share price required to obtain control of the corporation. Sometimes as little as 1% of the corporation's value.
They can then order the corporation closed, erasing the equity of all other shareholders. The money people have spent on shares of stock simply evaporates into thin air.
Paying out shareholders whatever the residual equity of the company is is both realistic, and fair. It prevents abuse from having any effect, as well. |
