[TheSpiceIsLife]

According to this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22619102 something like that happened to some of the UK banks.

It did happen in the UK. Banks that took bailouts traded shares for cash with the Treasury (this is a layman's understanding at least). RBS notably became 84% publicly owned.

The real scandal is the government selling back the shares for less than they paid for them (when RBS was on the brink of collapse).

[hedora]

Ideally, they’d be legally required to sell the shares to the highest bidder. If that bidder is the stock market, then so be it.