If you didn’t keep enough cash on hand (because you were shoveling profits out the door), you lose your ownership interest (insolvency with no bailout).
These are very reasonable conditions for a nation state bailout.
It's important to point out that "shareholders" could include "managed retirement plans", especially when talking about stocks that pay dividends.
This is implying you could keep enough cash on hand. Outside of tech giants, how many companies keep enough cash reserves to survive months without revenue?
Edit: Very few business have that cash on hand, but will usually have access to credit revolvers that could carry them through this. I am aware of many firms that have drawn down their entire revolver.
Now whether we should be bailing companies out, that's a separate question.
Fundamentally, if 2020Q1/Q2 GDP is effectively down 30% or whatever the number is, and we want to "replace" that loss, it's hard to see where that sort of money can come from except "all of us" in various forms (higher taxes due to government bailouts, higher prices, higher inflation, etc, etc). The main question is where the incidence of the economic pain will fall. Letting companies go out of business places that incidence partially on the shareholders and partially on the ex-employees and partially on the ex-customers. Unemployment insurance and the like can partially help the employees in the short term. The shareholders seem to get little sympathy, understandably, though note that they include things like pension funds and whatnot. Customers (who can no longer get the goods the company used to provide) may be just out of luck or other companies might at some point spring up to address the demand. In the short term they are just out of luck.
It seems to me that a lot of economic readjustment will take place no matter what, with open questions about speed and smoothness.
Simple, bail the companies out (thus saving all the jobs), but wipe out (or significantly dilute) existing shareholders.
They find themselves talking to themselves for the money.
They hate that.
I’d agree it’d be different if your business is small (less than $10M/year in turnover); you’d look at the books with a less critical eye.
When a company requires more cash, in times of need, it can issue debt or raise capital. Capital is usually paid last, in the pecking order. If government is lending to companies, it is reasonable to require them to avoid depleting its cash reserves paying capital.