tturner,
It doesn't matter if the company accumulates more than the float, because they already did. If the short naked more than all the float, then they have to use the market to cover, just simple as that. For example, the Co. bought 100m, 13G people have 80m combined, the short has 300m naked. So even if they make a deal with these two groups, they still have to cover in the market. What they do is they limit their loss, that's it, but they cannot run away from covering from the market. Now all of the above is taken under the assumptions that the company is even making a deal with the short. And forget about the SEC in the beginning of the covering, what Soapy said was that if they still cannot cover, then SEC will kick their ass after, not before the covering.