Got me thinking, what keeps companies like Apple and Google from doing the same? What are the benefits of staying public for them? What would be the consequence of going private? I'm just very curious now.
Putting that problem aside, at their current valuation, a group of investors will need to raise a huge amount of capital for relatively small return.
Dell took it private because the market effectively wrote off Dell and it wasn't trading much more above the book value. So raising capital to cover the amount was not difficult because the company was still reasonably profitable with good cash flow.
For Apple and Google, you'd need a massive amount of money to buy the companies. Dell found it by taking his money plus taking billions in private equity partners and can creditors. One thing that helped Dell was that it was a pretty cheap company. Trading at less than 10 P to E.
Plus Wall Street trusts Apple and Google. There isn't a huge gain by going private.
I ask because the idea is funny in my head: Something that is valued at price x and has the capital (aka x moneys and then some) to pay for itself.