Answer: Martin Lipton, of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, created the poison pill — formally, the shareholder rights plan. Lipton devised it in 1982 as a response to the era’s corporate raiders, including T. Boone Pickens and Carl Icahn: once a hostile bidder crosses a set ownership threshold, the plan lets every other shareholder buy discounted stock, flooding the market with shares and making the takeover ruinously expensive. It became the most-used takeover defense in American corporate law. Read more here.
« Previous 1 2