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Who says they're for sale?
by a13n 8y ago
Who says they're for sale?
- wpietri 8y agoHow could a publicly traded company not be up for sale? As I understand it, a takeover attempt could be either friendly or hostile, but my understanding is that anybody with sufficient money could make an offer above the current market price and the board would be obliged to consider it. They could say no if the price was too low, but I think their fiduciary duty to public shareholders would oblige them to accept a sufficiently good bid.
- dilyevsky 8y ago“fudiciary duty” is typically a corpspeak invoked at allhands to explain why certain benefit is being cut. There’s no obligation to sell afaik and whether the company is public or not should be irrelevant really.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoThere might not be an obligation to sell, but there is one to serve the shareholders. If the offer is respectable I would think not selling would likely result in lawsuits, etc.
- dd36 8y agoThe public float can be a less than majority fraction of total float.
- wpietri 8y agoHuh. Are you thinking of Uber here, or is this a more general point? If the former, I'm not sure that's possible given what we know about their cap table. And if the latter, wouldn't fiduciary duty to minority shareholders still require the board to accept a sufficiently good offer?
- dd36 8y agoNo. I know nothing of Uber's capital structure. I helped take a couple of companies public that only offered a minority fraction of their equity to the public markets. They structure as a different class of share.