US companies will usually either pay their employees first, or fire employees before they can't pay them.

You can float a lot of other bills in various ways, but if a company gets to the point of not being able to make payroll, it's basically game over.

Not paying your employees is the first thing you do when you have a hint of cashflow problems?

No I meant that in order to avoid any possibility of personal liability the C team would give up and liquidate the company much faster than the UK where more efforts might be made.

I have direct experience of this - I even chaired a share holder meeting about a refinancing.

Before liquidation there's an option of layoffs and raising additional debt.

Most of US payroll is on a biweekly system, so it's hard to accummulate too much liability as far as employee payroll goes.