http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=SNE&annual

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=aapl

Sony has 3.5 times more total assets, 6 times the amount of employees, 1.5 times the Stockholders Equity, and more Tangible Assets... Sony is definitely way larger than Apple... So I am not quite sure how they would do this....  O and just let me add the irony that while everyone is saying "why would a money maker like aple buy a dying company like Sony," Apple is down 1.2% and Sony is up 1.2%, it is just one day but I still found it funny.

@Cheeseburger: Sony also has debt, unlike Apple, which is "negative assets".

Let's assume that Apple would want to buy Sony and would finance the aqcuisition with its shares. How couldn't it be possible?

Look at the two companies profit margins. Why Apple is so successful, is because of its profit margin. They are so successful because they aren't the biggest player in the market. Buying Sony would mean going down in margins and a big change in their size.

 Still Sony's total assets - total liabilities is greater than Apple's, so any way you look at it Apple can't do this unless it starts printing money. 

I don't think it's possible for a very prominent JP company like sony to be sold to apple anyway. If all else fails, sony is most likely going to be bought by the JP govt. At least that's what I think.

@Cheeseburger: Apple has pretty much been printing money in the last couple of years.

Assets, means everything the company owns. If Sony sells a factory they own, the assets go down if the money was spent for example to pay debts (also the debt goes down in the case).

In the end, if buy a company, ie takeover, you buy the companys shares. Whether you pay it with money or shares or both, is a different matter. The company is worth what its shares are worth in the stockmarket. In a merger the assets would have bigger meaning than in case of a buyout.

^^
Yes, but even in the wild wild west of stock exchange there are more stringent rules to mount a raid than for the normal trading of smaller shares of societies, and assets become more important.

Yay another joke thread

The only way these graphs look the same is if you don't look at the numbers and percentage drops of each stock.

Not every company is losing a lot of money. I can assure you that Microsoft and Nintendo will make a lot of money in this quarter, their profit margins are too big to be erased by the events we're seeing lately.

^^
Sony ~50% loss in share value
MS ~40%
Nintendo ~35%, fast recovering from a bigger loss
Not the same, not dramatically different, but it's evident Nintendo is doing best and Sony worst.

@Alby: Each company has its own "rules" how it can be bought. Usually it's about after certain percentage of shares is owned by a single instance, it has to buy the rest of the shares.
You can acquire a company by buying it little by little of make an offer to shareholdels. Usually when such an offer is made, the share value goes up.
Companies can also have shares, that serve no other purpose than trading. And a companys value can be below the value of its assets (and can also be bought below the value, although, that's usually very special case).

In case of a buyout, if another company makes an offer, it depends on the shareholders confidence to the company whether to accept it or not.