3 ms·

Maybe because the current owners were done with it, and were no longer interested in running it -- thus wanting to sell? Companies are owned by people, you kno

• WorldMaker 9y ago
  Large companies are owned by people in the same way that representative democracies are (indirectly) owned by people. You can count the number of large US companies that have passed down any generations (much less 10+) on maybe two hands. We have an economic reality where most major shareholders like to vote themselves short-term bread and circuses every quarter, and there is very little incentive to consider any sort of long term horizon beyond at most a fiscal year. Furthermore, most major shareholders in any large corporation aren't people. They are companies themselves. At best they are sometimes hedge funds aggregating the interests of lots of little people, like representatives in a democracy. But there are also plenty of remoras and piranhas and worse, too.