you just went thousand miles off the track. and you are so wrong that you can't even have a clue... it is shame that people criticizing wall street people are the ones who don't even bother read up on what stocks really are etc.. but lets start with basics: share price is a price the deals are made currently with relatively small quantities. if Jobs has more cash than nokias share price multiplied by amount of shares, he can't get all the shares. that is because when you buy shares in large quantities, prices go up (demand becomes higher). usually when trying to get all the shares, you have to pay a premium. the higher the premium, the bigger the probability that you will succeed. but I'll say that with nokia it would have to be something like 200-500% to even look a bit realistic. If I'd own nokias stock, Jobs would have to pay me about 500% premium for it.... if he don't, he doesn't really want it.