If nothing else, company officers and the board have an obligation to shareholders, which would would not want to see their shares diluted in that way. So no, it is not surprising that companies decided to relocate to jurisdictions that were not about to nationalize them.
Great, you've just described taxation.
> which is nationalization -- the government taking control (even fractional control) of a company by force.
How is buying shares on the public market with government money taking control of a company by force? No current shareholder is obligated to sell their shares.
Ah of course, taxation is theft... [1]
> If nothing else, company officers and the board have an obligation to shareholders, which would would not want to see their shares diluted in that way.
Shareholders voluntarily selling their shares to the government does not 'dilute' shares of other shareholders. It doesn't matter if the government's money came from taxing the company, some other company, or individuals.
[1] I'm sorry, but if you want to take advantage of a country's labour force and markets, you are expected to pay taxes. What the government does with that tax money is up to them.
1. Government has money. This money is collected through tax revenue, resource royalties, etc.
2. Shareholders of company voluntarily put sell orders on a stock exchange.
3. Government places buy orders on a stock exchange.
4. Repeat #2 and #3 enough times, and the government becomes a majority shareholder.
No part of this involves confiscation, any more then Berkshire-Hathaway buying, and taking a public company private is 'confiscating' it.
Why is a government buying a majority of a company's shares on the public markets bad? Why is one man, or an investment firm buying a majority of shares of a company any better?
An attack on this is an attack on the concept of public markets.
'Public markets' does a lot of work in this claim. There's an obvious difference between shotgun nationalization, and a hostile stock takeover. It's the difference between armed robbery of a grocery store, and buying a loaf of bread at posted prices.
This seems to be a common reaction when market proponents see their own system used against them. (See also: collective baragining on the side of employees vs collective bargaining on the side of management. For some reason, one is bad, but the other one is just the way things are. Management bargains collectively, but we have to bargain against them independently.)