👉 A buyout is a type of financial transaction in which a company acquires ownership interest from its shareholders, often through a stock swap or other structured arrangement. In this context, a "buyout" refers to the process by which a company sells some or all of its shares to its shareholders at a predetermined price and then returns the remaining shares to the company's shareholders as part of an equity swap. The term was originally used in the 1960s to describe a situation where a