Poison Pill MathJimmy, I agree with you that the Poison Pill would cause huge dilution to the buyer's holdings. This is a key deterrent to an unfriendly buyout.
But isn't the 50% discount supposed to be applied to the price immediately prior to the stop-trading-order to make the takeover announcement? (say 93 cents, not $5). And if the buyer doesn't own any shares prior to the offer, then they hardly care about dilution. Shareholders should care more, because they would have to write a cheque to BNC to exercise the rights offering, to avoid themselves getting diluted. For many of us, this would be a lot of cash to come up with. I personally hope nobody takes a run at our Pill. I hate these things.