poison pill
3
7.9
- noun
- /ˈpɔɪzən pɪl/
- Jargon
:
píldora venenosa
- The company's board decided to implement a poison pill strategy to deter unwanted takeover bids.
Examples
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"The American Civil Liberties Union, another longtime foe of Real ID, said the Real ID requirements were a 'poison pill that derailed this bill, and any future legislation should be written knowing the American people won't swallow it.'
Blog text (29) -
"Icahn lashed back Monday afternoon, saying that 'any poison pill without a shareholder vote is an example of poor corporate governance.'"
Blog text (23) -
There is a reason why the league is calling these kinds of contracts poison pill contracts.
Blog text (13) -
And that operates as a fairly effective poison pill because what it means is if you wanted to get control of that board, it would take you three years.
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CNN Money reported Monday that "the plan, known to investors as a 'poison pill,' would kick in if an individual or group tried to buy a sizable chunk of the company without approval from Netflix's board.
Blog text (23) -
For the 1988 presidential contest, the CPD, in conjunction with the campaigns of George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, offered the League a poison pill: agree to a long list of debate conditions or get lost.
Blog text (18) -
The first time Hutchinson did it was in 2006, after the left guard bolted from Seattle to sign a free-agent offer from the Minnesota Vikings that included a much-discussed "poison pill."
Blog text (29) -
As two Delaware judges have observed, the SROs might similarly decide that shareholders should have the right to vote on the adoption of a poison pill, despite state law empowering management to adopt such a pill without shareholder approval.
Academic text (2004) -
Unitrin's board found that AmGen's offer was inadequate and therefore defended against it by implementing a poison pill, an advance-notice bylaw, and a tender offer to repurchase nearly 20% of Unitrin's outstanding shares.
Academic text (2017) -
Investors were concerned that the poison pill could significantly lower the company's stock value.
Synonyms
A step a company takes to stop another company from taking it over
A plan a company uses to stop another company from taking control
A planned action by a company to make itself less attractive to a buyer even if it harms the company
A company buys a heavily regulated firm to stop a hostile takeover
How Defensive
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the words 'poison' (harmful substance) and 'pill' (tablet or unpleasant thing) evoke a harmful or damaging object, the specific sense 'a corporate defensive strategy to deter takeovers' is a domain-specific, metaphorical extension that B1 learners who only know the constituent words would not predict. The meaning is idiomatic within business/finance contexts rather than compositional, so it is not transparently derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Poison pill comes from the image of giving someone a poison pill that would hurt whoever swallows it. One popular image says companies create rules that would punish an unwanted buyer, so the phrase now means 'a plan to stop a takeover'.