Doesn’t that ultimately punish not the company, but anyone who lent money or sold material to the company? Usually assets would be liquidated to pay off creditors but if all the assets go to employees creditors don’t get paid.
It’s easy to assume those creditors are all big banks, in which case you probably wouldn’t shed a tear to see them lose a few million on loans. The real problem though is all the small businesses who sold supplies or materials to the company and haven’t been paid for them yet.
And of course, this all ignores the fact that for most companies most of their valuation is in their intellectual property, mainly their brand identity and recognition. In theory you could sell the brand, but if the brand is being sold because it acted so negligently that it’s no longer allowed to exist, who would buy it?
For manufacturing company’s, even most of the tangible assets are going to be things like factory buildings and equipment. Those things are all highly specialized to making whatever it is that the company made. It’s likely to be very difficult to get someone else to come in and use that space to the same level of productivity. That could result in major damage to the local economy when a huge source of tax revenue and local jobs suddenly disappears.
I’m not saying all this because I think companies should get away with whatever they want. Not at all. I just want to give some context for why these “obvious solutions” aren’t being used. It’s not that the entire world is in some conspiracy. Many of these problems are legitimately very difficult to solve.