It’s all very well putting in place these elaborate shareholder rights plans to ward off unwanted takeovers but none has ever actually been successfully activated in anger, and these days they usually simply signal that a company is discretely putting itself up for sale: Huntsville, Alabama-based Intergraph Corp says its board of directors adopted a shareholder rights plan and declared a distribution of one common stock purchase right for each share of Intergraph common stock, the ostensible aim being to deter coercive takeover tactics and help prevent partial tender offers; each right will become exercisable only if a person or group acquires or makes a tender offer for 15% or greater ownership in the company’s common stock, or if mergers or assets sales involve more than 50% of the company’s assets or earnings power, it said.
