Joining a company being acquired
"Is there anything I need to ask or consider during my negotiation   process based on the fact that they probably will soon be own by   another company? Very tricky situation. You are being hired by one company, and one hiring manager. But you already know that there are big changes ahead. What you don't know is how all those changes will actually play out. You will at least end up working for a different company.  I've worked for several companies in the past that were acquired, and some that acquired other companies. After each acquisition, the nature of the company changed significantly. Some teams were let go completely (often ""overhead"" departments like accounting, marketing, etc, that were handled at the corporate level), some teams were moved to a different location, others stayed the same. Sometimes management changed. In one case I was working for a new boss who worked out of the home office in another state. The time frame for these changes ranged from immediately, to several years after the acquisition. For me at least, some of the things that made the job appealing earlier typically were gone.  Try as best you can to ask questions about the acquisition, and about the nature of the acquiring company. If they are allowed to tell you the name of the company that is acquiring them, do some searching. See if you can find out how the company typically deals with acquisitions - do they immediately let almost everyone go (keeping only the ""essential"" few), or do they run new acquisitions as separate divisions and leave them alone for at least a while? Try to find out from your hiring manager what their expectations are for your specific team post-acquisition. Try to find out if anything within your offer is subject to change, post-acquisition. Are you being hired under the old, pre-acquisition rules? Or under the new, post-acquisition rules? The fact that you even know the company is being acquired is good. Often, companies cannot even divulge that fact until very near the end. On the other hand your use of the phrase ""probably will soon"", makes me wonder how much is definite here. Here's something you might wish to read: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/20357/a-coworker-beat-me-to-resignation-how-can-i-resign-in-a-professional-manner" The best answer I can give is - be prepared for change. There's no perfect question you can ask or assurance you can get prior to accepting the offer that will give you any particularly perfect security or sense of stability here.  The company itself is going through a change of identity that can change how it will do business and even what the business is and how revenue is acquired.  In the time of the acquisition your role within the company could change radically for better or worse, it could even be eliminated entirely. If that type of uncertainty doesn't appeal to you - don't take the position. If you are absolutely psyched about this job, the best thing you can do is to learn more about the business itself and see if you can make any educated bets about how your role will play into the changes in business strategy that will come with the acquisition.
Vesting As you may know a stock option is the right to acquire a given amount of stock at a given price.  Actually acquiring the stock is referred to as exercising the option.  Your company is offering you options over 200,000 shares but not all of those options can be exercised immediately. Initially you will only be able to acquire 25,000 shares; the other 175,000 have conditions attached, the condition in this case presumably being that you are still employed by the company at the specified time in the future.  When the conditions attached to a stock option are satisfied that option is said to have vested - this simply means that the holder of the option can now exercise that option at any time they choose and thereby acquire the relevant shares. Dividends Arguably the primary purpose of most private companies is to make money for their owners (i.e. the shareholders) by selling goods and/or services at a profit.  How does that money actually get to the shareholders?  There are a few possible ways of which paying a dividend is one.  Periodically (potentially annually but possibly more or less frequently or irregularly) the management of a company may look at how it is doing and decide that it can afford to pay so many cents per share as a dividend.  Every shareholder would then receive that number of cents multiplied by the number of shares held. So for example in 4 years or so, after all your stock options have vested and assuming you have exercised them you will own 200,000 shares in your company.  If the board declares a dividend of 10 cents per share you would receive $20,000.  Depending on where you are and your exact circumstances you may or may not have to pay tax on this. Those are the basic concepts - as you might expect there are all kinds of variations and complications that can occur, but that's hopefully enough to get you started. &gt;  Google would be forced to actually compete with companies vs. Giving everything away free. That creates employment opportunities for other startups to compete in a fair environment vs. Trying to acquire millions of users on no revenue.  TL;DR Don't blame business, blame the politics that let bad business happen.  Business doesn't work like that, specially for a publicly traded company. 'Free' goods or services are used as a loss leader to drive their profits in other sectors of the company. Whether it's for PR, marketing, or sales, no company drives their business at a loss. Somewhere, somehow the free things they do are driving their business towards higher profitability. Money isn't being lost on the economy by providing these things as free, it's just being used in different ways. Sure it could be used to pay for the wages of an employee at a startup which provides the same service... but if Google is providing it at or below the most efficient market price then it would be *wasting* money to have less efficient companies providing essentially the same product or service. That money could instead be used in more profitable sectors of the economy, which could in turn generate a healthier and/or faster growing economy overall. Working smarter, not harder.  Secondly, startups aren't designed for profitability in the first few years of their operations. They're designed to capture users  and information (or as patent holders but that's largely unrelated to my main point) that can later be acquired by larger companies who are looking to target those users. Why else would any company pay for a startup while they're operating at a loss? The revenue for startups comes much later on as they're bought out by bigger companies or they find a way to monetize their user base/generate stable sources of revenue.   If your argument is that employment by start ups drives the economy at large, I have to ask, if the economy is operating less efficiently (by supporting start ups in replacing the market share currently held by much more efficiently operating large companies ~) by employing more people, how is this healthier for the economy as a whole?   Supporting start ups is good but it has to be done in such a way that it doesn't hurt existing business just for the sake of making jobs. The size of a company doesn't make them bad as long as they compete fairly with everyone else in the market.  ~ caveat being where large companies do not form an oligopoly (ie Comcast, TWC, etc...) which is obviously inefficient to begin with which is largely a product of bad politics rather than market forces SMSFs are generally prohibited from acquiring assets from related parties (whether it is purchased by the SMSF or contributed into the fund). There are some exceptions to the above rule for acquiring related party assets, including: • Listed securities (ie shares, units or bonds listed on an approved stock exchange, such as the ASX) acquired at market value. • Business real property (ie freehold or leasehold interests in real property used exclusively in one or more businesses) acquired at market value. • An in-house asset where the acquisition would not result in the level of the fund’s in-house assets exceeding 5%. • Units in a widely held unit trust, such as a retail ,managed fund. In-house asset rules An ‘in-house asset’ is generally defined as: • An investment by an SMSF in a related company or trust (ie a fund owns shares in a related company or units in a related trust). • An asset of an SMSF that is leased to a related party. • A loan made by an SMSF to a related company or trust. An investment, lease or loan that is an in-house asset is not prohibited, but is limited to 5% of the market value of the fund’s assets. The Answer: If your pre-owned Western Australian Rock Lobster fishery quota units are not included in the exceptions then you cannot transfer them into your SMSF. "If you business is incorporated, it's up to the two of you how to do it. Typically, you will have the company write cheques (or make transfers, whatever) to each of the humans: If you want to say that each of you gets a salary of 80% of the revenue you bring in, and then tweak things with bonuses, you can. If one of you is contributing more to marketing and awareness and less to revenue, then you may prefer to pay you each the same even though the revenue you bring are different. It's up to you - it's quite literally your business. When you're not incorporated, then for tax purposes you split the income and the expenses according to your ownership share. If that doesn't seem fair to you, then a partnership is probably not as useful to you as being incorporated. In general, it's better to be incorporated once you're past any initial phase in which the business is losing money for tax purposes (acquiring depreciable assets) and the partners have taxable income from elsewhere (day jobs, or at least income from the earlier part of the year before starting the business.) I would recommend that the ""partnership"" phase of the business be very short. Get incorporated and get a shareholder agreement." If company A purchased 100% of company B, yes, company B's financial results would be required by accounting rules to be consolidated into company A's financial results.  Company B being public would have no bearing on this requirement   If company A is purchasing less than 100% of company B then the answer depends on the structure of the transaction. Having stock options means that you have worked for and rightfully earned a part of the company's capital appreciation. Takeover of the company would indicate someone is interested in the company (something should be valuable). It would be unwise to not strike before the period lapses since the strike price is always lower than market price and takeovers generally increases stock values ... it is capital gains all the way my friend. Good luck. *observations not in professional capacity. pls consult a professional for investment related advice. You are purchasing an Asset, I believe. Assuming this is a public company, i'd recommend reading the analyst calls from the last several quarters. This will give you an idea of what investors, and therefor likely the board and senior leadership, are focused on at a very high level. Youre an intern, so dont feel like you need to blow the doors off, but showing that you are aware of the company's major objectives and asking some thoughtful questions about them is probably a good start.