That's not "slightly", it's big time conspiracy theory. Once a company goes public, stock manipulation is illegal. It's illegal before too, but it's much more difficult to prove. But once it's public, the SEC loves to go after whomever tries to manipulate stocks. Now, the vast majority of offenders are short term stock manipulators. What you are describing here is a scheme involving multiple "capitalists" who would coordinate themselves and invest billions in an long term illegal scheme, with the hope that nobody rats, and the scheme would produce no profit in the end, but would "save capitalism", and would have some nebulous upside to IB's, VC's, etc.