2. It looks like Apple didn't get much 'ownership' of OPA in this case, what was the point of purchasing the company as a whole versus simply offering these 3 employees generous sign-on bonuses?
3. Why is it that companies generally tend to pay a lot more per employee in an acquihire scenario?
Perhaps the acquired employees might prefer this for tax reasons. If they stand to profit mainly via capital gains, that is wildly better than receiving ordinary income, like a bonus, would be.
Or, a completely different, unverifiable possibility:
An acquisition does not set any precedent for compensation of any kind. As a general rule corporations hate paying humans, but don’t mind paying other corporations.
In other words, the scenarios I've seen if the acquired company is not doing well the acquirer pays off the investors and gives the employees a small bonus contingent on staying for 1+ years and hitting goals. It's not necessarily a crazy windfall.
2. branding. cultural awareness can take years or more, and I'm sure coporate knows by now that their brands aren't the best thing to slap onto every scenario. Disney is well learned in this kind of conduct.
3. Because the last thing you want in an aquihire is for all the talent your poaching to jump ship. Some employees may have even worked there previously and used a company to get away from that corporate culture.
So a lot of an aquihire's money tends to go towards golden handcuffs.
But it does look to be a 90% "company hires maintainer of code it uses."