Same in Ireland. Even if we gave employees their own old laptop to keep, we were told this would possibly put the company on the hook for warranty claims.
Instead what they did with the old non-leased hardware was that they said we had to bring it back when we were done with transferring our old stuff over (wink wink). But of course this model is not possible with a completely different party.
Afaik, in uk, schools and the likes need to get warranties for everything "donated" in an effort to not become an e-waste dumping ground.