So somehow Apple is going to shed their entire cash hoard, bringing their market cap down to, say, 300 billion, and then Tim Cook is going to call up Wells Fargo and borrow 150 billion to buy 51%. Then he&#x27;s going to offer to buy the whole company, vote yes, and finance it with another 150 billion from Bank of America.<p>The problem with this scenario is not that Tim Cook and a small circle of insiders can&#x27;t get 300 billion in loans (though they can&#x27;t). The problem is that this scenario has <i>nothing to do with the stock buyback</i>. If Tim Cook can get a loan for 300 billion to buy Apple stripped of its cash, he can certainly get a 500 billion loan to buy Apple before the cash is gone. The 200 billion loan will be paid with the 200 billion cash, so that&#x27;s the easiest part to finance.<p>Even the need to pay a premium over the current price isn&#x27;t gone in the 51% scenario. If Took Cook holds 51%, he can vote to sell. But if he votes to sell to himself at a price less than the other 49% would agree to, he will absolutely be facing a 100+ billion class action lawsuit. You cannot use majority ownership in a company to take further ownership from others at a price less than they would otherwise accept. To do otherwise is to steal from the other stockholders and no different functionally than voting for a sale to yourself at a discount.  If this strategy were legal, you could indeed buy 51% and then force a sale for pennies per share.<p>Besides all this, the 150 billion to hypothetically buy 51% of Apple stripped of its cash is not meaningfully different than 250 billion to buy 51% of Apple with 200 billion in cash intact.  The additional loan amount for the cash seems like the easiest part to finance.  If &quot;buy 51% and force the rest to sell&quot; were a legal strategy, you could pursue this strategy as easily before the cash is gone as afterward.<p>So again, the viability of Apple going private has nothing to do with the stock buyback.