It's not for those times. Two things: 1. The acquisition was in 1987. To put that into context, that's before the WWW even existed (1993) or people even having

It's not for those times. Two things: 1. The acquisition was in 1987. To put that into context, that's before the WWW even existed (1993) or people even having corporate email. Working remote wasn't even possible at that time because everything was done in-person and/or on paper. As such, it was commonplace for acquisitions to be migrated back to HQ (this also explains why so many older companies have such big corp HQs because there was a date and time when everyone worked at that location). 2. "Key personnel" typically means founder and executive staff. It's totally reasonable for an acquirer to want the key people to stay engaged and get fully integrated (because why else acquire the company). And because of #1, it was common place to ask for this relocation. Keep in mind, they didn't have to accept the buyout offer but they did.