> What they really have is control over real assets. I deliberately say "control", because that is what counts, and ownership is not even that important, often many times indirect, sometimes not even that.
Control is fungible to a large extent. If a company is badly run, someone can launch a takeover bid and get that control for themselves. All that matters is that they're generally expected to do better at running the company, so that it's more likely to generate money in the long run and less likely to do broke.
It also matters that they have access to the money to do the takeover. That can happen in many ways but generally requires they have at least a few percent of it themselves, which for most companies and most people is way out of reach.
(Also with a privately owned company there's not really any means to do this in a hostile manner)