Self-Tender Defense

  

You run a public company that specializes in providing fruit juice colonics. A major hedge fund has decided that it wants to take your company private and replace its management (meaning you). For obvious reasons, you don't want this to happen.

Your stock is trading at $10 a share. The hedge fund launches a tender offer for your shares at $12 a share. The move means they will pay any of your shareholders $12 for their shares, an attempt to get a large enough stake in the company that they can force the takeover to take place.

Time to fight fire with fire. You launch your own tender offer, buying shares back from your own shareholders to prevent the hedge fund from getting them.

The strategy is called a self-defense tender. It's the corporate equivalent of licking all the cookies so you can eat them all. A self-tender defense consists of the target of a hostile takeover starting its own tender offer, counteracting the tender being run by the firm attempting to achieve the acquisition.

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 Pac Man Defense?
21 Views

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

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 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...

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