london-boy said:
Even if MS wanted to, they still wouldn't be able to buy any of those. It's a liiiittle bit more complicated than "having the cash and wanting to buy".
Actually it's not, if you have enough cash.
It's called a hostile takeover. It's how IBM bought Lotus in the ninties, and how Oracle is in the process of buying Peoplesoft right now.
All you have to do to take over a publically traded company is own enough company stock that you can outvote anyone against you.
To get more stock than anyone else in the company, you offer a stock price high enough that shareholders can't resist the temptation to sell it to you.
There are a variety of defenses.
A common one is called a "poison pill". The idea being if someone tries a hostile takeover, the company issues new shares to existing owners automatically. This usually causes the share value to self-destruct (hence "poison pill"), but increases the holdings of the existing owners of the company, thereby making it harder for someone to get enough to take over the company -- but not impossible, depending on how much cash the attackers have.
Microsoft could probably afford to buy Sony regardless of any defense Sony could put up. Sony's total market cap is about 33 billion dollars, and Microsoft (pre-dividend) had $75+ billion in cash and much more in financing if they wanted to borrow the money to do it (Microsoft has zero debt).
Of Sony's total shares, only 16% are held by insiders of the company and institutions, meaning 84% of shares are on the open market and may be buyable should the price be driven high enough.
That said, it's quite likely that if MS were to try this, they'd get US antitrust involved again -- aside from the fact that Sony is a company with significant debts (12 billion+) and a tiny profit margin (1.38%), and a totally different corporate culture.
Hostile takeovers also tend to destroy high tech companies. Unhappy employees will just leave the target company and work for someone else rather than stay, taking the most valuable asset of any high tech company with them: employee skills and knowledge.
All these factors make Sony a rather unappetizing takeover target for MS and a waste of tens of billions if they tried it. The key point is that IMHO, MS *could* probably do it if they really really wanted to -- but they don't want to, for a lot of very good reasons.
