Reply To: Chometz Now – Where May We Buy it?

They are very different. A company is a corporate entity. It doesn’t matter whether there are many shareholders or only a few, or even only one, it has it’s own existence, and when it is sold it is sold.

A private business means there is no corporate entity, there is only the Jewish proprietor doing business in his own name. Before Pesach he sold not the business but only the chometz inventory. Therefore if you think his continuing to sell that same inventory invalidates the sale, then you would be machmir.

But if he sold the whole business then he was not selling the inventory on Pesach, the business was, and it was always clear that that was going to happen. There was no pretense that it wouldn’t, nobody even asked him that it shouldn’t. Even if he personally stood behind the counter selling the business’s chometz, he was doing so as the company’s employee, which is perfectly muttar even lechatchila. So there’s no reason to raise any concerns about the sale.