There is this story how Microsoft wanted/wants to buy Nintendo but was laughed out of the room. Is nintendo not a stock company? Couldnt Microsoft just buy 51% of all the shares? From what Ive seen the biggest shareholder is a japanese bank with 17%. Its not like somebody already owns the half.
In: 1530
It’s not nearly as simple as that.
E.g. you could try to buy all Facebook shares, but then you have to deal with the fact that Zuck owns stock amounting to 51% of the voting power, so it’s still his company for all practical purposes.
Even if you don’t have that sort of control by one individual, some companies have “poison pills”: bylaws where, if one shareholder crosses a certain threshold, all other shareholders get to buy a bunch of stock at a highly discounted price.
I don’t know Nintendo’s situation, but there’s many ways in which it’s not that easy to buy out a company that doesn’t want to be bought out.
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