3 ideas
What looks like a local labour conflict or accident is often decided by actors who never see the site: bidders, ministers, bankers and insurers. For them the factory is an asset on a balance sheet and a piece in a larger transaction. Workers' grievances, the plant's survival and even an arson become variables in a negotiation over share price, subsidies and political credit.
Foreign investors are drawn into deindustrialised regions with public grants, tax breaks and promises of jobs. That aid can be captured up front, while the plant itself stays thin, under-invested and disposable. Once the subsidies are used up or a larger deal takes priority, closure costs the investor little, and the region and the workers carry the loss.
Read corporate takeovers as contests over who holds damaging information, not over who runs the better business. A fire, a fraud or a hidden debt matters less for its material damage than for who learns of it first and uses it against a rival bidder or official. In that world, private investigators, ex-police and intelligence contacts are the key market actors.