I&#x27;m not disagreeing with you on whether this will (not) happen.  I&#x27;m telling you that you that hypothetical or not, it does not work the way you think.<p>&gt; <i>The stock buyback is an important part because it increases the insiders&#x27; percentage ownership of the company while not raising the value of the company. If Apple were to purchase a 100 million shares of the company, they would also be spending Apple&#x27;s money. That transaction is completely balanced, company value doesn&#x27;t change. If Tim Cook purchased 100 million public shares of the company, the stock would go up because it is injecting new money into the equation.</i><p>Tim Cook buying 100 million on the stock market doesn&#x27;t meaningfully change Apple&#x27;s price.  If he buys 100MM in stick, it just means that he takes ownership of the stock from someone else who walks away with 100MM.  There&#x27;s no new money &quot;injected&quot;.  If he wants to buy a significant amount of stock, there will be some upward pressure on the price, because you have to find someone willing to sell, but that same condition applies to Apple.  They have to buy on the open market just like Tim Cook.  If a 100MM purchase is going to push up the market cap by 0.1%, it&#x27;ll do the same for both.<p>As for the buyback being important because it increases insider&#x27;s ownership, no, it doesn&#x27;t.  At least not in any meaningful sense.  There&#x27;s maybe 1% held by &quot;insiders&quot;.  If Apple buys back 175 billion in stock at their current price&#x2F;value (a terrible assumption, but whatever), they&#x27;ll take 33% of the stock back.  So the insiders will hold 1.5% instead if none of them sell.<p>It&#x27;s not possible for even an extended buyback to drive up the insiders&#x27; shares to a significant amount.  And I don&#x27;t mean &quot;not plausible&quot;.  It mathematically doesn&#x27;t work.  Apple has far more in real estate alone than the insiders&#x27; shares are worth.  To hand them significant ownership of the company would mean to destroy the company by liquidating everything and leaving them a husk (even the name is worth more than the insiders&#x27; shares).<p>And yes, they could theoretically get loans to buy most of the company, but again, that&#x27;s no different before or after the buyback.  As you noted, the stock buyback is (theoretically) balanced.