Not an expert by any means, but I see nobody else has answered so I'll give it a shot. In the less extreme case, the seller has no choice but to sell or go unde

Not an expert by any means, but I see nobody else has answered so I'll give it a shot. In the less extreme case, the seller has no choice but to sell or go under, so they'll take the best offer they can get. In the more extreme case, there is no choice because the seller has already taken on some debt under conditions that give the creditors first claim on assets. Then it's easy for the rentiers to buy up the debt and then wait - usually not long - for the company to run out of operating funds and trigger their own effective acquisition. I once worked at a startup that suffered a similar fate. They had taken on some debt - a small amount really - during desperate times. Later, before the debt was paid off, they ran out of operating funds. Boom. Game over. The company shut down, most employees were immediately let go except for a few charged with liquidating the assets and wrapping up all the IP which went into storage somewhere never to be used again. It sucked. That creditor probably made a tiny bit more than they had loaned originally, while everyone else lost. And the only way their own business model worked was to do the same thing over and over and over again, destroying enough aggregate value that even the residue they skimmed off the top could pay for their yachts or third vacation homes.