As Western economies emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, banks and governments are facing a new problem: how to deal with the corporate walking dead. But an innovative worker-centred scheme could offer a possible solution.

In both the US and the EU, corporate bankruptcies have declined during the 15 months of the pandemic, despite the severe accompanying recession. That decline is a result of rich countries’ governments, in their understandable desire to soften the pandemic’s economic blow, extending every possible safety net to firms.