poison pill
English
[edit]
Noun
[edit]poison pill (plural poison pills)
- (business) Any strategy designed to produce negative results for an entity carrying out a takeover.
- Synonym: shareholder rights plan
- Hyponym: flip-in
- 2003, Donald DePamphilis, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Other Restructuring Activities, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 151:
- The study also concludes that there is no indication that poison pills reduce the chance that a company will become a takeover target. In contrast, if investors viewed the introduction of the poison pill as deterring potential takeover attempts, the effect on shareholder returns would be negative.
- 2022 April 14, Lauren Hirsch, “What happens next in Musk’s Twitter takeover offer.”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
- There are reasons Twitter may opt not to do a poison pill. It might be wary of potential criticism that a poison pill is deflecting the concerns of a highly vocal member of its community.
- (politics) A provision in a bill that leads to people who would have supported it opposing it instead.
- 1996, William J. Clinton, “Remarks on the Legislative Agenda and an Exchange With Reporters”, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, volume 1, page 706:
- They want to load the bills up with poison pills, measures the Republicans are inserting in the legislation to make sure I will veto it, so they can pretend it's not just the poison pill I'm against but the bill itself.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see poison, pill.
- Hyponym: suicide pill