For a long time, you've had a crush on your best friend's spouse. You lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking of them...sighing forlornly and imaging what it would be like to be with them. You thought you'd never have a chance. They were off the market.
Then word comes: your best friend and their spouse are getting a divorce. Soon, they'll be dating again. Finally, your chance has come (assuming you don't care too much about your best friend's feelings). Your crush is back on the market. They are...in play.
The same dynamics work for the corporate merger market. A company is said to be "in play" when it becomes a clear candidate for a takeover.
This situation can arise in a number of ways. A company can announce a merger deal, which prompts competing offers to appear. Or a company can announce that it wants to put itself up for sale, and then conduct a formal process of receiving bids. Or another company can launch a hostile bid, which again flushes other suiters out.
Whatever way it happens, the key point is that the company now has multiple bids to juggle. It's in play.
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Finance: What's the difference between m...23 Views
Finance allah shmoop what's the difference between mergers and acquisitions
all right people listen up Merger that's what's about to
happen here it's a merger acquisition that's what's about to
happen here Corporate america is kind of same thing when
two companies merge while they generally you know attracted to
each other hopefully respect each other they share stock or
combined the stocks of each side and you know combine
efforts and then and then cuddle afterwards if they're successful
at the merger than the combination of two roughly equals
yields more than the one plus one combo that made
them so two companies get together on generally equal ish
footing In that case acquisitions are a combining more like
that eating thing on much different footing The large company
eats or buys the target either using its more highly
valued stock currency or it's taft to do so Well
why would a company acquire another Well the target might
have one hundred employees ninety of whom can be fired
with massive expense savings after the acquisition For the acquirer
such that economically the acquisition won't just makes a whole
lot of financial sense acquisitions happen for market power reasons
As well like imagine the negotiating leverage that amazon would
have if it bought the next five biggest online retailers
Or maybe it'll just kill them Probably not legal for
them to buy him anyway given the monopoly like dominance
of amazon these days But wow that would be a
powerful set of acquisitions And that would be a good
reason for ems on to acquire a whole bunch Things
and bezos would grow even more powerful maybe too powerful
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