Originally posted on Beastrabban\'s Weblog:
Mike over at Vox Political has posted up a piece on Atos’ rebranding itself OH Assist. While Atos certainly are not bankrupt by any means, it does remind me of the way the managers of failing companies have tried to escape their creditors by going into liquidation, and then starting another company. Every so often, one of these companies, sometimes using a name little different from their predecessors, turns up on Watchdog or one of the other consumer interest programmes. This is, of course, perfectly legal, and so old that it was satirised by Gilbert and Sullivan in the libretto of a Company Promoter, written in 1893:
If you come to grief, and creditors are craving …
Do you suppose that signifies perdition?
If so you’re but a monetary dunce -
You merely file a Winding-Up Petition,
And start another company at once!
… the Liquidators say,
Never mind – you needn’t pay’,
So you start another company tomorrow.
