You're right, there need to be enough outstanding shares for a hostile takeover to take place. But more relevantly to IBM's case, the top shareholders are also

You're right, there need to be enough outstanding shares for a hostile takeover to take place. But more relevantly to IBM's case, the top shareholders are also the top executives. [1] So, in this case, the stock price going down affects them direcly. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052216/top-5-ibm-shareholders-ibm.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052216/top-5-...