[Barrin92]

the market capitalization just reflects the total value of all outstanding shares, not necessarily the price at which anybody would be willing to fork their shares over.

If you'd try to take over VW you'd need to put significantly more money on the table. (if the majority shareholders were at all willing to sell).

[Xylakant]

There has been a takeover attempt against Volkswagen by Porsche which failed precisely for that reason. Stock price rose, financing fell apart. And the Porsche owners already had a large chunk of the Volkswagen shares, at least in the extended family.

[blattimwind]

Actually it failed for a bunch of reasons, and by the time Porsche had to make the takeover bid they had to offer below stock price, because they ran out of money. In the end Qatar invested a billion or two (who keeps track of small change anyway) into Porsche to reduce their billions of debts a bit and VW effectively swallowed Porsche.

IIRC in the aftermath several analysts stepped forward saying the entire approach was flawed and was extremely unlikely to work out from the outset; Porsche committed some strategic mistakes later on in the process, which did not improve things.

[qaq]

Failed is a very strange way to put it considering that Porsche Automobil Holding SE controls a 52.2 percent voting stake in Volkswagen.

[ableal]

Interesting, the "VW bites back and eats Porsche" take was the one passed to public perception. The car brand did get corralled into the VAG stable.

A search on the phrase get confirming news like this: http://europe.autonews.com/article/20180310/ANE/180319954/vw...

[qaq]

Well again Apple has enough on hand to pay 3x the current market cap and I don't really remember situations were someone payed 3X premium in a take over of large public company. To have a controlling stake they have enough to pay 6x the current share price it would be really hard to argue that 500% premium would not be enough.