Greenmail

2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  greenmail \green"mail\ n. (Finance)
     The act, performed by a publicly traded corporation, of
     paying a corporate raider to give up a takeover attempt, by
     buying the shares of stock he owns; also, the threat posed by
     corporate raiders to take over a company unless their stocks
     are purchased by the company at a price giving them a large


     profit. [Informal]
     [WordNet 1.5]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  greenmail
       n : (corporation) the practice of purchasing enough shares in a
           firm to threaten a takeover and thereby forcing the
           owners to buy those shares back at a premium in order to
           stay in business