Thedude said:Which brings the question of how do you fire an owner.
I assume this was a question...
Not hard at all if the "owner" is not the majority stockholder. It just takes the majority stockholder OR a coalition of stockholders that is a majority to say "you're fired".
You're still a stockholder, but not an employee. Big difference.
Lots of family run businesses that sell stock, even closely held, get scammed in this way. Once your a minority stockholder, you can really get d!cked.
A common way of doing the "owner" in is to gain a majority in the stock (50%+1 will do) with a few other people. Then make a backroom deal with a bigger corporation to sell out at a significant discount in the stock price, but make it back up with an outragous "consulting agreement" that basically pays the participants $500,000/yr to play golf. The orginial owner, who may even have %50-1 gets the shaft.
If you have a family business, even closely held, it is critical to have buy/sell agreements, and to retain voting rights on any stock sold.
FYI
Nu