When one company buys another, like Microsoft and Activision, where does the money go?

Question

When a deal like Microsoft buying Activision goes through, does the money that the company is paying go to the company being bought? Does it go to the shareholders? Does the Activision stock just go away?

The reason I am confused is, if Microsoft gives Activision billions of dollars, at the end of the day, isn’t Microsoft effectively giving themself billions of dollars?

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I’m using Microsoft and Activision as an example, but I am curious about how this works in general.

In: 2

Answer 1

The money goes to whoever owns the company in the first place.

Whether it’s a single person, a family, or millions of stockholders.

The company doing the acquiring is buying ownership from the other company’s current owners.