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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

If the llc declares bankruptcy does meta have to pay the bank for it - or can they buy the assets at fire sale prices?

I have skimmed through the article and if I get the details through all the humor, satire and sarcasm even remotely correct, the major assets are actually the duality of payment obligations and residual value guarantees, both from meta. One could include cost overrun protection at the construction time too.

The "fire sale prices" would be so delicious as to guarantee that the entity(-ies) involved stay solvent as long as meta stays solvent.

My personal experience with LLC loans and banks is that the bank is using the assets as collateral and me as a backstop.

I thought the whole point of LLC was to limit liability so you wouldn't be liable for debt beyond your paid up capital? Why would you ever sign a personal guarantee?

banks are not stupid… you can’t just open LLC, borrow billion bucks, spend it and then be like “oops, LLC mates, not liable”

You can if you are Meta and are willing to litigate the hell out of it.

Do you think any CEOs of gigantic corporations are personally liable for any loans made by the companies they work for? I would be incredibly, incredibly surprised to hear if that's the case.

More like if you are Meta and are viewed as a lucrative business opportunity by the bank.

Then why don't they do it? It's the easiest money they can ever make. Even I can litigate the hell out of it if I get $27B, take the money and close the LLC.

“If you are meta” in this case means “if you have a billion dollars already, and a credit rating that you don’t want to destroy.

Nobody is trying to pull one over on a bank here. Pricing the risk of the loan is a bank’s whole business, they’re happy to loan to meta because meta is meta, and they’re a good candidate for a loan.

> if you have a billion dollars already

Meta has $44.4 billion in cash-on-hand as of September 2025.

I'm correcting you because people can't really fathom just how wealthy these companies are. They could buy startups for billions of dollars with literally the cash they have in their bank accounts, let alone debt or stocks.

The liability I’m shielded from is not debt I specifically requested. I’m shielded from unknown events.

Why would the CEO have the personal liability here and not the board? Does Sundar Pichai have to personally guarantee loans for Google? That would be weird since the CEO could be fired.

No, but this person’s LLC is not capitalized quite as well as Google, and the bank is adjusting the loan to account for that fact.

>Why would you ever sign a personal guarantee?

So that they will lend you the money...

It's not always required, depends on the amount and the business.

"Me" in this case being a stand-in for the principal owner, which could be a corporation, individual, or group of individuals

Meta doesn't actually owe the bank anything in this setup. That would be Blackrock and the other private creditors.

Mechanistically, how would the LLC achieve bankruptcy?

you just... file for bankruptcy like any other person or corporation?

Yeah but when you come to bankruptcy court with significantly more assets than debt, they aren't going to let you sell the business for pennies.

I'm asking how you would believe this vehicle would go broke, which is the usual reason to go to bankruptcy.

Corporate bankruptcy happens for a lot of reasons other than being "broke". Chapter 11 is a court-supervised way of restructuring your debt. This has a lot of utility in many situations other than not being able to pay.

It'll go before a judge and creditors would be able to object, so if it's just a ploy to get rid of debt you can be certain it'd be contested.

Meta may have lots of assets, but the LLC may not. The ability to have one wholly owned LLC go bankrupt by itself is one of the main reasons shell corporations exist.

Meta would have to not renew the lease and somehow nullify the residual value guarantee. This would leave the LLC with no revenue at all. If the RVG works there should be no chance of bankruptcy.

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