Greenmail or greenmailing is the practice of purchasing enough shares in a firm to challenge a firm's management or leadership and even threaten a corporate takeover, thereby forcing the target firm to buy those shares back at a premium in order to suspend the potential takeover or to take other actions that remove equity from the greenmailer and return it to the target firm. The term is a neologism derived from blackmail and greenback as commentators and journalists saw the practice of said corporate raiders as attempts by well-financed individuals or their operating companies to blackmail a company into handing over money by using the threat of a takeover.

Read full article on Wikipedia · CC-BY-SA