Using GDPR to transfer customer data from a company being wound up to a new company

[MrTBone]

I used to be director of company A until a few months ago when I was forced to resign due to complications with the bank account. Company A now no longer has any directors and is in probate and the inheritors want nothing to do with the company. The highest authority in the company that will actually respond is the office manager. Company A is no longer paying its employees due to the shareholders not assigning a director and like I said, they want nothing to do with the company. The employees are now having to petition to the court to wind the company up so that they can get made redundant and claim their lost wages and redundancy.

I am starting up Company B which is exactly the same as Company A in what it does and who it's customers would be and I would like to hire all the existing employees when Company A is dissolved. I would also like to get all the existing customer information from Company A and I had an idea that I'd like to ask about to see if there would be any legal ramifications from doing it. Basically, the data is owned by Company A, however, if the office manager in Company A sent out a letter to all it's known customers explaining that they are closing down, could they also state that a new company is forming (Company B) and would happily assist with any repairs or maintenance on the products sold by Company A. Could I state in the letter that their information would be sent to Company B unless they "opt out"?

If they agreed, by doing nothing, their data would be transferred under the GDPR right to portability of their data and it would be assumed that they would be happy with this unless they got in touch by a certain date.

Would this be legal or would I have to do an opt-in - they would have to contact the company and request it happen or would the office manager not be able to advise this to the customers in the first place?

If this would not work, is there a way it would?

BTW, I have tried to purchase Company A from the shareholders but like I said they aren't interested in responding - due to the company debt they would also likely want more than what it is worth even if they did respond.

[Huxie]

STEPHANIELAW is a spammer and has been reported.

[PallasAthena]

Thanks to someone here (sorry, can't remember who it was!) who answered my question about why spammers bother I learned that they have usually hidden an 'invisible' link to a website to try to manipulate its search engine rankings, and these can only be seen if you highlight their whole post. And so it is the case here. Highlighting the spammer's post shows that hidden at the end of the second paragraph of MrTBone's quoted post is an 'invisible' link to an American gaming site. {Posted for anyone as curious as I was about what the spammer was up to}

[EXC]

Yes, in this case the link was inserted into the quoted post. As always I'm very grateful to the keen-eyed Huxie for spotting and reporting them.