voting rights for their equity stake. Hostile firms' strategies The strategy that is usually employed by a hostile firm is making an offer more lucrative than the white knight's, so that the shareholders consider rejecting the white knight's bid. This, however, can lead to bidding wars and finally to overpaying, by one or the other, for the target firm. Another option is known as the "NL strategy". Here, the hostile firm allows the white knight to move ahead and waits for the acquisition to take place. Once things are settled between the two entities, the hostile firm launches a takeover offer for the white knight. This takeover offer is generally a hostile one. The target (firm being bid on) can enter into with the white knight to prevent it from turning into a gray knight. Examples 1953 – United Paramount Theaters buys nearly bankrupt ABC 1980 – Renault buys a controlling stake in American Motors, which saves the struggling American automaker from bankruptcy 1982 – Allied Corporation buys Bendix Corporation in a situation involving the "Pac-Man defense". Allied is drafted in when the company that Bendix tries a hostile takeover on fights back by buying up Bendix stock in attempt to create a reverse hostile takeover. 1984 – Chevron Corporation acquired Gulf Oil after Gulf tried being a white knight to Citgo in 1982 in order for Citgo to avoid a hostile takeover by T. Boone Pickens. Pickens then turned his attention to Gulf, leading to the Chevron–Gulf deal. 1984 – Sid Bass and his sons buying significant interest in Walt Disney Productions as a defense against Saul Steinberg's hostile bid for the company. 1987 – Kluwer Publishers merges with Wolters Samson as a defensive move against an attempted hostile takeover of Kluwer by Elsevier 1998 – Compaq merges with financially weak DEC 2001 – Dynegy attempts to merge with Enron to cover Enron's massive debts (the merger failed as it became obvious that Enron had been committing fraud, resulting in the Enron scandal) 2003 – SAP was seen by analysts as the most likely to help defeat Oracle's hostile bid for PeopleSoft, but it came to nothing 2006 – Severstal almost acted as a white knight to Arcelor as the merger negotiations were in place between Arcelor and Mittal Steel 2006 – Bayer acted as a white knight to Schering as the merger negotiations were in place between Schering