Tender offer

A tender offer is one method of acquiring the stock of a public company. It is an offer to purchase some or all of a corporation’s publicly traded stock directly from the company’s stockholders with cash, the bidder’s stock (known as an exchange offer), or a combination of cash and stock. By making a direct solicitation to a target company’s stockholders to acquire their interests, a bidder can take a controlling position in a company if the stockholders owning a majority of the target company’s outstanding shares agree to sell their stock, whether or not the target company’s board recommends the acquisition.