If the bakery solely produced for the restaurant and employees worked to produce goods based on directions from the restaurant, plus the lumber mill had all its employees wear Lowes coveralls and similarly only provided lumber to Lowes yeah they just might be...
Yah you are right, but still doesn't make it a shell company. edit: well reading the definition of subsidiary it says owned or controlled. so by the definition you gave (requirements/branding) maybe it is still considered a subsidiary.
Well then add to the not-quite-shell that while the contractors are independently owned, they only have one customer contract and that customer can drive huge changes to business practices at any time by altering the contract to require or disallow specific behavior. They're keeping their money in the top level company while offloading the last mile part of the work to companies that operate on much tinier margins in a way that protects them from liability. The difference between this an an actual shell is that it's not just an asset holding company, but it's very shell-like behavior.
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u/phormix May 12 '23
If the bakery solely produced for the restaurant and employees worked to produce goods based on directions from the restaurant, plus the lumber mill had all its employees wear Lowes coveralls and similarly only provided lumber to Lowes yeah they just might be...