Takeover Artist

  

Categories: Entrepreneur

See: Takeover.

Someone who's really good at taking over companies. What makes them good? Well, there are really two elements here. The buying comes first. Can they find the right fragile company that's stumbling, thanks to bad management? Or is fighting upstream in an environment now heavy with tech, but where they're not equipped to fight? Maybe they have blocks of angry frustrated shareholders and insiders who, for a modest premium in stock price, would sell out enough blocks of stock so that the takeover artist now controls the company.

So the buying is a combo of gentle massage and axe-murdererness, with gentle threats and FUD-wringing all over the place. That's the first part. The second is the operations of the company, performed way better after it's been bought. Like...does the artist know how to deal with long form union contracts? Can they source from Mexico and China and save 500 basis points in costs? Can they refinance debt from the Germans on better terms? Can they technologify things and make the product hip and cool again, so that stores actually want to stock it without big checks upfront?

That's all part of the art, yes, The art of the deal, more or less.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a poison pill?4 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what is a poison pill O romeo

00:08

romeo Wherefore out the ac Well if you can't have

00:12

me nobody can have me pill lug dead dead alright

00:17

that's poison pill allah romeo and juliet and performed by

00:20

your friends here and the corporate version Well it isn't

00:23

all that different In fact there are really two flavors

00:25

of poison pill flintstones chewable lt's called flip ins which

00:29

allow current shareholders to buy a ton more shares at

00:33

a big discount toe where their shares are currently trading

00:36

flippen like if the shares are at forty bucks each

00:39

current shareholder than gets allowed to buy five shares for

00:42

ten bucks each for each share that they currently own

00:45

and have owned for the last in a year About

00:48

that would be a flipping well this flip in process

00:51

dilutes the company dramatically making it harder for an outside

00:55

takeover soldier to come in and you know just buy

00:57

the company that's a flip in the non chewable flintstone

01:01

flavor that you have to actually swallow is called ah

01:03

flip over which comes is a mandate from the board

01:07

allowing current shareholders to buy the shares of the acquirer

01:11

After the merger at a big discount it basically destroys

01:14

enormous value in the combined company making It tastes like

01:17

a bitter moth to ah hungry bat so you know

01:21

he spits it out The basic idea in these poison

01:23

pill defense strategies is to deal with hostile takeovers And

01:28

a lot of those came during the junk bond era

01:30

in the nineteen eighties when cheap high risk capital was

01:33

liquid Lee easily available almost anywhere and companies felt vulnerable

01:39

to short term quick buck wall street sharpies who looked

01:42

great in a dark suit and usually had awesome hair

01:45

So yeah people for details carefully watch wall street the

01:48

first one the good one the one with michael douglas

01:51

when he still had hair and what you don't really 00:01:54.212 --> [endTime] hear there is he said Shmoop is good yeah

Up Next

Finance: What is a Hostile Takeover?
24 Views

What is a Hostile Takeover? A hostile takeover happens when a buyer goes past the management of a company to acquire it. The company’s management...

Finance: What is a Corporate Raider?
37 Views

What is a Corporate Raider? A corporate raider is a predatory investor who purchases a significant bloc of stock or debt in a public company in ord...

Finance: What is a Pac Man Defense?
21 Views

A Pac-Man defense is a strategy for defending against a hostile takeover. Or...against unwelcome houseghosts.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)