PAC-MANÜ NOUN (BUSINESS WORLD)

Used attributively (in Pac-Man defence or Pac-Man strategy) of a company's response to a take-over bid: involving a counter-bid in which the company facing the take-over threatens to take over the 'predator' instead. Etymology: A figurative use of Pac-Man°: the situation is likened to a game of Pac-Man, in which the central character can, in certain circumstances, gobble up the monsters that threaten to devour it. History and Usage: The Pac-Man strategy was first so named in 1982--less than two years after the video game came on to the market--bearing witness to the way in which the little yellow gobbler had caught the imagination of the general public. The name was coined by New York investment bankers and first reported by Deborah A. De Mott in the Wall Street Journal in August 1982. By the end of 1982 it had been used in a number of markets outside the US as well. Martin Marietta's strong countermove is in line with a budding takeover defense plan that Wall Street arbitragers and investment bankers alike yesterday were calling 'the Pac-Man strategy'. 'That's where my client eats yours before yours eats mine,' a merger specialist at one major investment banking firm said. Wall Street Journal 31 Aug. 1982, p. 3 The board saw the tactic as an ASCAP, an assured second-strike capability; someone else called it a Pac-Man defence, after the video gobblers. Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 26 Dec. 1987, p. 16