Then came Yahoo: Microsoft stock fell 15% in early February following the company's attempted hostile merger with the search engine giant.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Then came Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ): Microsoft stock fell 15% in early February following the company's attempted hostile merger with the search engine giant.

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The British, however, having seen both an agreed merger and a hostile one fail, are in no mood to link up with the Americans.

ECONOMIST: Deutsche B?rse

Their relationship ended during a dispute over the terms of a deal to forge a single business out of Xstrata and Glencore, with Glasenberg annoyed that Davis joined a push for more generous terms, a demand which was met but which also turned a so-called merger of equals into a hostile takeover and the break-up of the team.

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The message implied that after merger talks had broken down, Sony was launching a hostile takeover bid.

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In 2000, the two exchanges agreed a merger plan which fell apart when the LSE received a rival, hostile bid from the Swedish OM exchange.

BBC: Deutsche Boerse shareholders had opposed the LSE bid move

The companies ended up discussing a steel joint venture and widening the co-operation into a full merger, but nobody in Germany has tried a high-profile hostile takeover since.

ECONOMIST: European mergers

All this forced Krupp first into talks with Thyssen about an agreed merger of the two companies' core steel businesses, and then into abandoning the hostile bid altogether, leaving a steel joint venture as the only option.

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