The shark from Jaws. The velociraptors from Jurassic Park. The Predator from...Predator. They prey on...whoever.
Now take this exciting, dynamic, dangerous, edgy imagery and place it on...a bank. With accountants. And lawyers. Yes, bankers love the wild and crazy imagery to make their otherwise oh-so-civil jobs seem a bit more thrilling.
A predator in this sense is a takeover artist: someone who seeks out companies vulnerable to an LBO, hostile or otherwise. What kind of company makes for a good, um...dinner? Well, those that have stumbled and trade today for 6x earnings instead of the 20x they used to trade for. An offer of 8x probably wins enough votes to sell the company to the takeover predator who will hopefully fix it and then bring it public again at 20x.
That's how the predation works. Stalk. Buy. Takeover. Fix. And crap out a new, lovely company worthy of a high earnings multiple.
Wish Darwin were still around to frame what this all means.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is shark repellent?5 Views
what is shark repellant? So yeah for sharknado 11 the [empty movie theatre showing Sharknado]
schmoopy we just gave away the penultimate scene yeah sorry about that [shark getting sprayed with shark repellent]
well in the financial world however shark repellent is a fancy $5 word for
companies trying to fend off corporate raiding sharks like this guy trying to
take them over well companies deploy all kinds of tricks to dilute their shares [businessman attacked by sharks]
change their business dynamics create friction at the board level and
generally make themselves unappetizing to the Sharks hoping to eat them 4x and [businessman spraying shark repellent over their suit]
sell them for 2x4 years later well you'll hear of specific shark repellents [shareholder rights plan]
like poison pills and partner killer bees ie law firms that specialize in
hostile takeover defenses notion of a company currently trading at 40 bucks
getting a hostile takeover bid for $52 a share and somehow that being perceived
as just awful and terrible and bad is strange to many in the Wall Street [office workers complaining]
investing public if someone is really willing and able to pay a big premium to
buy a given company then why shouldn't it be sold to that new owner well in a
lot of cases the new owner will replace a whole lot of laborers with robots save [McDonald's drive-thru worker replaced with a robot]
a whole lot of money for shareholders and make the company more valuable to
shareholders so that's good for shareholders but not good for the slew
of laborers who are all now out of work and what do they do well the country's [ex-McDoland's worker crying]
taxpayers and typically pay for them in unemployment forms one way or another so [money going towards food stamps, unemployment checks and heathcare]
it's all an ugly political mess but the bottom line companies generally exist
for the financial benefit of the people who own them ie their shareholders and
if the stock market isn't giving the company a reflectively high value then
why shouldn't the company sell to someone who will and why is it the
company's owners job to employ laborers who could be replaced by robots cheaper [robot serving McDonald's drive-thru]
better faster hmm the point is that being that sharks well they aren't
always evil [shark boops guy off screen]
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