Monday, October 6, 2008

What is meant by Bailout?

With the current US Financial Crisis Looming at large, we are frequently hearing the term Bail Out. A Bail out is a form of corporate action that happens between two companies or institutions.

The term bail out in financial terms is almost similar to the term out on bail as per legal law. If someone has committed a crime and is jailed they need a bail to come out of jail. Until a Bail is issued the convict has to serve his term in Jail.

Similarly if a company is in a financial crisis and is about to go bankrupt they would be looking out prospective buyers or people who can help them manage the crisis. At such a situation, some other company may opt to help them out of the crisis by either buying a stake in the company or by taking that company over. This process would require the approval of all the share holders of both the companies and would take a lot of time to materialize. Once it is approved by the share holders and also by the law makers the buying company would infuse fresh capital into the bought company and help stabilize the financial position of that company.

In some cases like AIG which is a very famous Insurance company in the US, the country’s government may opt to help it out.

Such a scenario would be termed as bailing out.

Posted by Anand Vijayakumar at 12:35 PM
Labels: , , , , ,

2 comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
© 2013 by www.anandvijayakumar.blogspot.com. All rights reserved. No part of this blog or its contents may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Author.

Followers

Popular Posts

Important Disclaimer

All the contents of this blog are the Authors personal opinion only and are not endorsed by any Company. This website or Author does not provide stock recommendations. The purpose of this blog is to educate people about the financial industry and to share my opinion about the day to day happenings in the Indian and world economy. Contents described here are not a recommendation to buy or sell any stock or investment product. The Author does not have any vested interest in recommending or reviewing any Investment Product discussed in this Blog. Readers are requested to perform their own analysis and make investment decisions at their own personal judgement and the site or the author cannot be claimed liable for any losses incurred out of the same.