and Merck KGaA 2007 – Nissin Foods launches a friendly 37bn yen ($314m; £166m) bid for Myojo Foods after US hedge fund Steel Partners offered 29bn yen to buy the firm. 2008 – JPMorgan Chase acquires Bear Stearns allowing Bear Stearns to avoid insolvency after Bear Stearns stock price suffered a precipitous decline, with its market capitalization dropping by 92%. 2008 – Volkswagen acquires Porsche, after Porsche launched a hostile takeover of Volkswagen by purchasing enough Volkswagen shares to control 75% of the company at one point. During the financial crisis, Porsche ran out of funding and was at risk of insolvency. Volkswagen both performed a Pac-Man defense and acted as a white knight to Porsche by lending them enough money to stay solvent, with the consequence being that Porsche was absorbed into Volkswagen. This unusual situation occurred because of the shared history between the two companies, and that the chairman of Volkswagen at the time was Ferdinand Piëch, a descendant of Ferdinand Porsche, a co-founder of Volkswagen before founding his eponymous company, and Piëch's family had deep ties to both companies. 2008 – PNC Financial Services buys National City Corp. after National City was denied TARP funds in order to stay afloat due to increasing concerns that National City would fail due to the subprime mortgage crisis 2009 – Fiat S.p.A. takes over Chrysler, saving the struggling automaker from liquidation. The two companies eventually merge into Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. 2022 – FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was called the "White Knight of Crypto" due to bailing out struggling cryptocurrency entities. He was also called the "J. P. Morgan of crypto", as J. P. Morgan had spent a considerable amount of his own money to shore up the banking system in the Panic of 1907. Ironically, FTX would spectacularly implode months later after FTX faced huge liquidity issues, for which Bankman-Fried himself would be arrested. See also Economics Industrial organization Microeconomics References Mergers and acquisitions