What does a corporate raider do

[Skidmore]

At this stage of a hostile takeover. Seriously, this Romney creature is not campaigning by traditional election strategies. We need think in terms of how a man grabs what someone else has built.

[GreenTea]

1. Buy low, sell off the companies assets, steal workers pensions, out-source the left over jobs,

receive tax breaks, write-offs, loop-holes and government subsidies (and many times even receive government contracts via our tax dollars) and when it's all said and done the raiders hide their hundreds of millions in off-shore accounts, Switzerland, etc...while paying little or no taxes, - Vulture Capitalism!

i.e., Republican Mitt Romney - Show us your tax returns Mitt - What are you hiding?

[1-Old-Man]

2. I'd love to have that on a bumper sticker, "How does one man grab what someone else built?"

And in the background would be Mitt's face.

[kurt_cagle]

3. Destroying Confidence

in order to reduce the asking price for the acquisition company, usually. Talking the stock down, planting rumors about cooked books and corrupt management. This close, you've built up junk bond collateral - cheap financing, oftentimes highly leveraged and even encumbered, that you'll supplement with the company's own debt once the deal closes - in effect using the company itself as collateral for the purchase. Preventing the target board from planting poison pills. You're also wooing the common stock investors by saying that if only the company had the right management, it could be a major dividend cash cow, though of course by the time the company is fully raided it'll be stripped of all it's assets, and common stock will be worthless. The primary goal is to either subvert or buy out the primary preferred stock investors, gain their vote proxies. Provide golden parachutes for the senior management. The savvy ones will take it, the principled ones will be out of a job once the company is taken over.

Mapping this out to a campaign strategy should be pretty simple, and certainly what Romney was trying to do. Don't think he's succeeding, mind you, but it seems to be the shape of his strategy.