Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did the company need to be sold at all? Why is a steady state of respectable profits/meeting consumer needs seen as "losing" in "modern" capitalism simply because it isn't exciting drama to shareholders?
Maybe because the current owners were done with it, and were no longer interested in running it -- thus wanting to sell? Companies are owned by people, you know? They might not want to pass down (large) companies for 10+ generations, due to different interests and passions.
We have an economic reality where most major shareholders like to vote themselves short-term bread and circuses every quarter, and there is very little incentive to consider any sort of long term horizon beyond at most a fiscal year.
Furthermore, most major shareholders in any large corporation aren't people. They are companies themselves. At best they are sometimes hedge funds aggregating the interests of lots of little people, like representatives in a democracy. But there are also plenty of remoras and piranhas and worse, too.