DAWN RAID NOUN (BUSINESS WORLD)

In financial jargon, a swift buying operation carried out at the beginning of the day's trading, in which a substantially increased shareholding is obtained for a client, often as a preliminary to a take-over. Etymology: A figurative use of a compound which comes originally from military contexts but had become something of a journalistic clich÷ in reports of police operations during the twentieth century: the media often reported that a dawn raid had been carried out on a house occupied by suspected drug dealers or other criminals. History and Usage: A phenomenon which began at the very beginning of the eighties, the dawn raid offers a 'predator' company the chance to take an intended victim by surprise, and is therefore a popular preliminary to a take-over. The proportion of shares which may be bought up in this way by a dawn raider has been successively limited during the eighties so as to give a fairer chance to the target company. Market lethargy has brought out the dawn raiders again, despite the recent stock exchange report on such practices. Economist 26 July 1980, p. 84 Its shares rose 14p to 235p, 5p below the new terms, as Blue Circle picked up a 29.5 per cent stake in a dawn raid on the stock market. Guardian 3 Aug. 1989, p. 11