poison pill

English

Noun

poison pill (plural poison pills)

1. (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.

2. (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.

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see poison,‎ pill.

   Hyponym: suicide pill