In what ways can a public company ask for money?
"There are many different methods for a corporation to get money, but they mostly fall into three categories: earnings, debt and equity.  Earnings would be just the corporation's accumulation of cash due to the operation of its business. Perhaps if cash was needed for a particular reason immediately, a business may consider selling a division or group of assets to another party, and using the proceeds for a different part of the business. Debt is money that (to put it simply) the corporation legally must repay to the lender, likely with periodic interest payments. Apart from the interest payments (if any) and the principal (original amount leant), the lender has no additional rights to the value of the company. There are, basically, 2 types of corporate debt: bank debt, and bonds.  Bank debt is just the corporation taking on a loan from a bank. Bonds are offered to the public - ie: you could potentially buy a ""Tesla Bond"", where you give Tesla $1k, and they give you a stated interest rate over time, and principal repayments according to a schedule. Which type of debt a corporation uses will depend mostly on the high cost of offering a public bond, the relationships with current banks, and the interest rates the corporation thinks it can get from either method. Equity [or, shares] is money that the corporation (to put it simply) likely does not have a legal obligation to repay, until the corporation is liquidated (sold at the end of its life) and all debt has already been repaid. But when the corporation is liquidated, the shareholders have a legal right to the entire value of the company, after those debts have been paid. So equity holders have higher risk than debt holders, but they also can share in higher reward. That is why stock prices are so volatile - the value of each share fluctuates based on the perceived value of the entire company.  Some equity may be offered with specific rules about dividend payments - maybe they are required [a 'preferred' share likely has a stated dividend rate almost like a bond, but also likely has a limited value it can ever receive back from the corporation], maybe they are at the discretion of the board of directors, maybe they will never happen. There are 2 broad ways for a corporation to get money from equity: a private offering, or a public offering. A private offering could be a small mom and pop store asking their neighbors to invest 5k so they can repair their business's roof, or it could be an 'Angel Investor' [think Shark Tank] contributing significant value and maybe even taking control of the company. Perhaps shares would be offered to all current shareholders first. A public offering would be one where shares would be offered up to the public on the stock exchange, so that anyone could subscribe to them. Why a corporation would use any of these different methods depends on the price it feels it could get from them, and also perhaps whether there are benefits to having different shareholders involved in the business [ie: an Angel investor would likely be involved in the business to protect his/her investment, and that leadership may be what the corporation actually needs, as much or more than money]. Whether a corporation chooses to gain cash from earnings, debt, or equity depends on many factors, including but not limited to: (1) what assets / earnings potential it currently has; (2) the cost of acquiring the cash [ie: the high cost of undergoing a public offering vs the lower cost of increasing a bank loan]; and (3) the ongoing costs of that cash to both the corporation and ultimately the other shareholders - ie: a 3% interest rate on debt vs a 6% dividend rate on preferred shares vs a 5% dividend rate on common shares [which would also share in the net value of the company with the other current shareholders].  In summary: Earnings would be generally preferred, but if the company needs cash immediately, that may not be suitable. Debt is generally cheap to acquire and interest rates are generally lower than required dividend rates. Equity is often expensive to acquire and maintain [either through dividend payments or by reduction of net value attributable to other current shareholders], but may be required if a new venture is risky. ie: a bank/bondholder may not want to lend money for a new tech idea because it is too risky to just get interest from - they want access to the potential earnings as well, through equity."
There are things that are clearly beyond me as well. Cash per share is $12.61 but the debt looks like $30 or so per share. I look at that, and the $22 negative book value and don't see where the shareholders are able to recoup anything. Your first scenario, involving shareholders in a private corp being limited by a contractual agreement, is common in practice. Frequent clauses include methods of valuing the shares if someone wants to sell, first right of refusal [you have to attempt to sell to the other shareholders, before you can sell to a 3rd party], and many others. These clauses are governed by contract law [ie: some clauses may be illegal in contract law, and therefore couldn't be applied here]. A Universal Shareholders' Agreement is just the same as the above, but applied to more people. You would never get an already public company to convert to a universal shareholders' agreement - because even 1 share voting 'no' would block it [due to corporate law limiting the power of a corporation from abusing minority shareholder value]. In practice, these agreements universally exist at the start of incorporation, or at least at the first moment shares become available. An example is the Canadian mega-construction company PCL*, which is employee-owned. When the original owner transferred the corporation to his employees, there was a USA in place which still today governs how the corporation operates.  In theory you could have a 'public company' where most shares are already owned by the founders, and 100% of remaining shares are owned by a specific group of individuals, in which case you may be able to get a USA signed. But it wouldn't really happen in practice.  *[Note that while PCL is broadly owned by a large group of employees, it is not a 'public company' because any random schmuck can't simply buy a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange. I assume most exchanges would prevent corporations from being listed if they had ownership restrictions like this]. You can apply for a position with any company you like, whether or not you are a shareholder. However, owning shares in a company, even lots of shares in a company, does not entitle you to having them even look at your resume for any job, let alone the CEO position. You generally cannot buy your way into a job.  The hiring team, if they are doing their job correctly, will only hire you if you are qualified for the job, not based on what your investments are. Stockholders get a vote at the shareholders' meeting and a portion of the profits (dividend), and that's about it.  They usually don't even get a discount on products, let alone a job. Of course, if you own a significant percentage of the stock, you can influence the selections to the board of directors.  With enough friends on the board, you could theoretically get yourself in the CEO position that way. Generally speaking: when a company buys another company it's a complex agreement that spells out many things, including how the acquiring company is paying for the target company.  These are the most common form of payment:  1. Cash. Shareholders of the target company get cash. 2. Shares. Shareholders of the target company get shares of the acquiring company. 3. A combination of 1 and 2 above. Here is something I have always wondered. Companies are required to go public after they have a certain number of investors. Used to be 500 now 2000. Can a company that has been forced to go public, then be made private again? How? You can look at the company separately from the ownership. The company needs money that it doesn't have, therefore it needs to borrow money from somewhere or go bankrupt.  And if they can't get money from their bank, then they can of course ask people related to the company, like the two shareholders, for a loan. It's a loan, like every other loan, that needs to be repaid. How big the loan is doesn't depend on the ownership, but on how much money each one is willing and capable of giving. The loan doesn't give them any rights in the company, except the right to get their money back with interest in the future.  Alternatively, such a company might have 200 shares, and might have given 75 to one owner and 25 to the other owner, keeping 100 shares back. In that case, the shareholders can decide to sell some of these 100 shares. I might buy 10 shares for $1,000 each, so the company has now $10,000 cash, and I have some ownership of the company (about 9.09%, and the 75% and 25% shares have gone down, because now they own 75 out of 110 or 25 out of 110 shares). I won't get the $10,000 back, ever; it's not a loan but the purchase of part of the company. What I think was being asked (and so this is how I interpreted it) is not the transition from public to private, but a corporation itself buying all its shares back, and as a result having no shareholders.  In this case we could envision that all outstanding shares would be become treasury stock.  My argument was that this would never happen in a practical setting.  Obviously, if you interpret the question differently, for instance to be about all the shares of firm being purchased by someone else (as in a private equity buyout), you get very different answers about practicality.  So I'm not disagreeing with you at all, I just read the question differently. Not going to happen for Facebook since there will be too much demand and the order will go to the top clients of the underwriting investment banks.  In general though, if you wanted a piece of a smaller IPO you'd just have to get in touch with a broker whose investment banking department is on the underwriting syndicate (say Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney) since IPOs often have a percentage that they allocate to retail clients (i.e. you) as well as institutional (i.e. hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds etc.). The more in demand the IPO the harder it is to get a piece. The other answer has some good points, to which I'll add this:  I believe you're only considering a company's Initial Public Offering (IPO), when shares are first offered to the public.  An IPO is the way most companies get a public listing on the stock market. However, companies often go to market again and again to issue/sell more shares, after their IPO.  These secondary offerings don't make as many headlines as an IPO, but they are typical-enough occurrences in markets. When a company goes back to the market to raise additional funds (perhaps to fund expansion), the value of the company's existing shares that are being traded is a good indicator of what they may expect to get for a secondary offering of shares. A company about to raise money desires a higher share price, because that will permit them to issue less shares for the amount of money they need.  If the share price drops, they would need to issue more shares for the same amount of money – and dilute existing owners' share of the overall equity further. Also, consider corporate acquisitions:  When one company wants to buy another, instead of the transaction being entirely in cash (maybe they don't have that much in the bank!), there's often an equity component, which involves swapping shares of the company being acquired for new shares in the acquiring company or merged company.  In that case, the values of the shares in the public marketplace also matter, to provide relative valuations for the companies, etc. Call the CBOE, the Chicago Board of Options Exchange I've requested options on several IPOs in the past. You mainly have to convince them that there is a market for them (or they won't be inclined to provide liquidity). The CBOE could talk to the company in question to help convince them, or the CBOE will just tell you when the options will begin trading. Oh yeah, sometimes they'll ask you who you work for, just try to avoid that question, they don't like to talk to individual/retail investors. how do they turn shares into cash that they can then use to grow their business? Once a Company issues an IPO or Follow-On Public Offer, the company gets the Money. Going over the list of question tagged IPO would help you with basics. Specifically the below questions; How does a company get money by going public in an IPO? Why would a company care about the price of its own shares in the stock market? Why would a stock opening price differ from the offering price?  From what I've read so far, it seems that pre-IPO an investment bank essentially buys the companies public shares, and that bank then sells them on the open market. Is the investment bank buying 100% of the newly issued public shares? And then depositing the cash equivalent into the companies bank account? Additionally, as the stock price rises and falls over the lifetime of the company how does that actually impact the companies bank balance? Quite a bit on above is incorrect. Please read the answers to the question tagged IPO. Once an IPO is over, the company does not gain anything directly from the change in shareprice. There is indirect gain / loss. Converting the comment from @MD-Tech into answer How or where could I find info about publicly traded companies about how stock owner friendly their compensation schemes are for their board and officers? This should be available in the annual report, probably in a directors' remunerations section for most companies "Private companies often ""make the market"" for their own stock. So they may offer to buy back so many shares a year, give staff the option to sell stock back after so many years, etc.  But private companies can have their own restrictions. They can, for instance, forbid secondary trading or explicitly limit voting stock to family members.  Ostensibly, someone could sell a big chunk of a company for whatever price they wanted (unless it was prohibited).  For tax purposes, IRS will come after you if you get a bunch of value for less than you paid for.  It is not an unheard of way to transfer wealth, but a dollar? Probably just gift it. But I'm not a tax attorney...   But is absolutely not the same kind of price transparency, or price movement, that you see in public stock, you are correct. Larger private companies may have secondary markets that are still less transparent." "All cash deals basically mean that the acquiring company isn't going to offer you shares in itself, but only the cash equivalent. Mechanically, the acquiring company will find out who the shareholders are, then use electronic means to send money to the shareholders of the target company through their brokerage accounts (slightly oversimplifying here but it's the essence).  As you've pointed out, using physical cash is impractical - they would have to send these amounts of cash to each shareholder of WFM, who will easily number in the tens or hundreds of thousands.  As for AMZN, how it raises this amount of cash is not addressed when we say the deal is ""all cash"". Essentially, it's AMZN's problem to figure out where to get this cash, be it through internal operations, bank borrowings, or issuing new equity." To issue corporate grade bonds the approval process very nearly matches that for issuing corporate equity. You must register with the sec, and then generally there is a initial debt offering similar to an IPO. (I say similar in terms of the process itself, but the actual sale of bonds is nothing like that for equities). It would be rare for a partnership to be that large as to issue debt in the form of bonds (although there are some that are pretty big), but I suppose it is possible as long as they want to file with the sec.   Beyond that a business could privately place bonds with a large investor but there is still registration requirements with the sec.  All that being said, it is also pretty rare for public bonds to be issued by a company that doesn't already have public equity. And the amounts we are talking about here are huge. The most common trade in corporate debt is a round lot of 100,000. So this isn't something a small corporation would have access to or have a need for. Generally financing for a smaller business comes from a bank.