Everyone else has pointed out that the shareholders get the money, but there can be something similar to your notion: you can buy a company, then make that company borrow money to essentially pay yourself back for buying it. Now you still own the debt along with the company, but you may find someone willing to buy the company from you and assume its debt in exchange for you paying back only part of the debt (a buyer might do this if the think the company’s future earnings potential outweighs the debt burden). You have in a sense used buying a company to give yourself free money. This doesn’t happen a lot, but it actually does happen, and it’s done by private equity firms. Often it doesn’t work out for the company in the long run—taking on too much debt after being taken over by private equity is what really killed Toys R Us—but it does work out for the people who buy the company in the first place.
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