Raiders

Abstract

Corporate raiders go after firms that show the 4 Toos: big, complex, fragile, and similar. Raiders’ mantra is: Undo these empires! They believe that the sum of the values of the parts of a corporate empire is greater than the value of the whole. I review both attack tactics and defense tactics in the battle between raiders and managers. Later in the chapter I introduce a simple model of how raiders search and pursue targets. I demonstrate that the model makes intuitively plausible predictions. I have learned to stop worrying that much about firms and to begin loving raiders. The chapter gives corporate raiders a lift to their rightful place in capitalism.