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We suggest that stars like the Sun should sometimes form with massive extended discs, and we show by means of radiative hydrodynamic simulations that the outer parts of such discs are likely to fragment on a dynamical time-scale (a few thousand years), forming low-mass companions: principally brown dwarfs, but also very low-mass hydrogen-burning stars and planetary-mass objects. We will compare the properties of the objects produced by this mechanism with the observed properties of low-mass objects, and show that this formation theory appears to avoid some of the problems associated with the `embryo ejection' scenario, and to answer some of the questions not yet answered by the `turbulent fragmentation' scenario.
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