You can buy a company in all stock, but it's quite a bit harder to buy labor with 100% stock compensation. If Uber is dipping into cash reserves for a deal like this, well, I hope for their sake this deal goes well. And if it is a all stock or majority stock deal, I wonder if Grubhub is going to ask for an even higher premium on their valuation than otherwise considering that 4.5 billion in uber stock with a lockup period of a few years at this time is probably not as valuable as the same amount in cash.
A lockup period or vesting schedule would make it a far less liquid asset for you. If it wasn't given with a lockup period, they'd probably have to come up with some staggered way of paying out stocks rather than at the end of every month or every other week so you dont get huge periodic selling spikes as employees sell off enough to cover their tax burden and expenses when the stocks come in. They might also be running foul of minimum wage laws. I think there are a lot of obstacles that make it operationally infeasible, even if employees are willing to accept it.
