Pac-Man defense

The Pac-Man defense is a defensive business strategy used to stave off a hostile takeover, in which a company that is threatened with a hostile takeover "turns the tables" by attempting to acquire its would-be buyer.

A major example in U.S. corporate history is the attempted hostile takeover of Martin Marietta by Bendix Corporation in 1982. In response, Martin Marietta started buying Bendix stock with the aim of assuming control over the company. Bendix persuaded Allied Corporation to act as a "white knight," and the company was sold to Allied the same year. The incident was labeled a "Pac-Man defense" in retrospect, after the then-popular Pac-Man arcade game, in which the player can turn the tables on pursuing enemy "ghosts" by waiting for them to draw near, eating an "energizer" rendering them vulnerable to attack, and eating them and sending them back to their home base, using the displacement to buy time to eat more of the board's dots.