It’s the shareholders of the purchased company that provide the financing, in the form of debt in the company’s books. Then they exit, and the company lays off people to service the debt, and you and I as taxpayers cover unemployment and other social harms.

It’s literally a way to extract revenue from our broader social institutions by spreading the pain across so many people that individuals don’t complain (or, in some cases, don’t even understand how it harms them).