Here's what any decent buyout offer would do. It would immediately shoot the share price to near the offer. But I would still urge shareholders to vote against that offer. Even with the offer shot down the share price would retain quite a bit of that rising share price because potential investors would see that a serious BP thinks it's worth that much. Then a fraction of those 200 million shares could be sold to build up a mighty war chest to get large trials done quicker.