insufficient time to check thoroughly before the deal. The CEO then went on to drop a real bombshell – someone was interested in buying us! Ouch! The offer was a very exploratory one, and I was one of a select few to know about it. She wanted to know how we stood as an employer in the event of a sale. I said I’d get a summary to her at the end of the day. personal level too, but I parked that right now to produce an employee summary from the system, and append the rules that a new owner would have to follow. This was just as well as moments later, a message came through that the CEO was calling a meeting at 4.00 p.m. Attendees besides her and me were the Finance Director and a partner from our retained legal service. No agenda, so TUPE again! Plenty to think about on a
confidentiality continued.
I needed to finalise things for Valentine’s Day! 9.24 a.m. The CEO wandered into my office unannounced, which was unusual, and sat down. She looked well – somewhere warm over Christmas/New Year I had heard. she had told me about last year. Due diligence was still underway, and meantime that company had laid off 74 employees, so something was not too good. I made a note to just double-check any TUPE implications for those workers. Was there an offer spoken about, recorded or documented when the redundancies were made? I really do not like TUPE! Just defining a Relevant Transfer can be tricky, let alone the other pitfalls. Employee Liability Information transfer is one that my network of HR colleagues complain about as there’s often First up, news of the possible acquisition
5.58 p.m. A later train than usual, but no biggie. I still got a seat! The meeting was an interesting discussion really to set the scene in the event that a speculative conversation turned into something more substantial. The major stakeholders were the CEO (45%), two individual investors from the start-up (20% each) and an investment fund (15%). The consensus was to wait and see if anything materialised and then put it to a shareholders’ meeting. A mundane start to the day had ended up like something out of a Netflix series!
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ISSUE 9 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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