What action by president lincoln most angered the radical reoublicans in congress.
Shares also trade in a secondary market on stock exchanges. A company can increase or decrease the number of shares outstanding without an IPO through stock splits and reverse splits. In all cases, the beneficiary of reverse split activity is the management of the company performing the reverse split. Shareholders may or may not benefit depending on the specifics of the reverse split.
Reverse stock splits boost a company's share price. A higher share price is usually good, but the increase that comes from a reverse split is mostly an accounting trick. The company isn't any more valuable than it was before the reverse split. Whatever value it has is just distributed over fewer shares of stock, thus increasing the price.