What buyer? At the time of the article, he's #79 on Forbes, so there's only 78 potential individual buyers here and they're probably all in the same pickle so far as getting liquidity.
Maybe you're thinking of a merger with some other company. How many companies had 7 billion dollars in liquid assets in 2007 and also thought owning FEV would be the best use of that money? I'm thinking not many, but I really don't have any idea.
Right, my read is that this is what makes the number theoretical
As an example, IBM paid $34 billion in cash to buy Red Hat last October, which it paid to Red Hats shareholders. Red Hat was worth $21 billion at the time.
In practice many cash purchases of businesses are funded in part by debt. Companies or investors can borrow money from banks, issue bonds to receive cash, and contribute some of their own cash to out find a cash offer for a company.
