IN THE HEADY days of the 1980s that ushered in the age of titanic takeovers, Wall Street's finest devised a defence strategy to ward off unwanted advances from voracious bidders. The Pac Man Defence took its name from the video arcade game that featured an insatiable pizza-shaped blob that roamed the screen devouring all in its path. Often used as a last-ditch effort to save a company from a raider, the Pac Man Defence entailed the victim turning on the assailant to acquire it instead.
An insatiable acquirer
Eduardo Cojuangco Jr (pictured left), known throughout the Philippines as Danding Cojuangco, also boasts another soubriquet - Pac Man. He got it because of his insatiable appetite for acquiring smaller businesses to add to his ever-expanding empire, headed by the huge brewing and consumer goods company San Miguel Corporation (SMC). Cojuangco, a scion of one of the country's wealthy and politically powerful dynasties,...
