[Lavery]

Maybe that's reasonable in private markets, but Logmein was a public company (LOGM). Valuations and multipliers for public equities are the consensus of a set of investors who buy and sell the stock all day. Anyone who wanted to take the money and run could choose to do so between the hours of 9:30 and 4 EST for the last decade.

[jacquesm]

That depends on the size of their holdings and on how liquid the stock really was, it might take quite a while to liquidate a large holding and it would very likely depress the market, especially if all the execs decided to liquidate their complete holdings (assuming they would be even allowed to).

So the consensus is what it is given normal volume, likely a relatively small chunk of shares changing hands repeatedly rather than a really large block being sold once. The latter would almost certainly depress the price.

[jyounker]

In other words, you get a discount for buying in bulk. :)

[jacquesm]

Yes, but this PE party actually paid slightly over market rate and up considerably from a week ago.