History
In 1982, Martin Marietta was subject to a hostile takeover bid by the Bendix Corporation. Bendix bought the majority of Martin Marietta shares and in effect owned the company. However, Martin Marietta's management used the short time separating ownership and control to sell non-core businesses and launch its own hostile takeover of Bendix (known as the Pac-Man defense). The end of this extraordinarily bitter battle saw Martin Marietta survive; Bendix was bought by Allied Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Martin Marietta
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)