Here is a simplification for those who may be reading this and are not familiar with how some of these deals work.
TLDR, investors/company’s don’t give a sh-t about you. They only care about one thing. Money.
Someone essentially takes out a loan to buy a company, once they own the company. The person has a lower interest rate. Than the company, because they use the credit rating of the company to determine the interest that they put on the loan that they used to buy the company for themselves. Which gets put on the company’s balance sheet as a loan that the owe the person. Who not only makes a profit off of the interest they charged the company after the loan is payed off. Plus they own the company.
While all of this is happening they essentially strip it for parts (selling off anything that is profitable), cut as much costs as possible to maximize short/medium term profits. Slowly at first. Then faster and faster. Then after they shoved down as much money as they possibly could in their pants they then let the company go bankrupt to the creditors. Which by then is is usually the people who bought the company.
They then use the bankruptcy process to pay as much as the original loan back as they can. With as many fees and surcharges as possible.
When they liquidate this is the normal order that the company owes the money to get paid. (Different in certain states) It goes from
secured creditor (anything backed by assets)
Administrative costs ( the lawyers and all the costs from managing the company in bankruptcy this is a gold mine for them you will also see corporate, spend absurd, money on stupid sh-t that only makes their finances worse which is good because a lot of them at this point are secured creditors)
Priority Unsecured creditors. (supposed to be the workers you get around this though and kick the can to step 4. )
General unsecured creditors Everyone else (even you the worker) except the what is in step 5.
The stock holders aka the retail investors and the money they force you to invest in them through your retirement plan, because all the Whales are gone 99.9% of the time.
So when a company liquidates you could easily lose the wages you have already worked that have not been payed out and you are almost guaranteed to make penny’s on the dollar of what they owe you from your stock, this is very dependable on the debt burdens the company has).