Share buying, hostile takeovers

I was just wondering what these "hostile takeovers" and such I keep reading about are. Specifically:

1) What is a hostile takeover in Simcountry, and how does it work?
2) What is the purpose of the "nationalization" option Presidents have?
3) Are my state corporations at risk of being bought by someone else, even if I haven't begun a public offering?

1. A player bids on another player's corporation uninvited. May also mean he took control of one of his public corps.

2. To buy (bid) a private or public corporation within their nation.

3. Yes, but you can go to your settings page and turn on the CEO block, so they can't build nor buy corps in your country.

So, what you're telling me is that CEOs can bid on any share of any corporation, and the initial owner would be somehow forced to sell it?

That is thoroughly confusing. How can I be forced to sell shares (say, from my state corporations) if I don't put them up for sale?

Yes. It is how it works, but I don't know the details - how many shares will be sold and for how much and all.

There are similar cases in the real world. It's not my area of expertise, but I know the case of a takeover in Portugal where one company managed to buy more than 90% of the stock in a takeover. Under this condition and some others, she could force the remaining stockholders to sell their shares. This is known as squeeze out.

Well, I believe that in the real world, a "hostile takeover" is, by definition, a corporate takeover rejected by the board and/or the company execs. Often by going directly to the shareholders.

I take it this financial semi-omnipotence is to make the CEO game interesting? Cause it could potentially bring crap for those playing President.

This is not exclusive to enterprises. If a country bids on a public corporation, it is the same process.

If you don't want CEOs to bid on your public corps, just block them from your country by checking the option in the settings page.

I find the block option a bit nuclear, so I'll trust the world for the time being.

Thanks for your replies. It's appreciated.

Its generally thought of as a bad thing to buy someone elses corporation, hostile bidding. You'll see plenty of arguements here about it. But, you'll also see that some people dont care at all because they receive more money than the corp is valued at. If you nationalise your own state corps, no one can buy them.

But, once you have IPOed your corps, then you have made the shares public, out there for anyone to trade in. Its up to you to keep control of them. Generally you wont find people buying shares if your country or CEO owns them, it's the ones owned by investment funds that get traded more frequently.

Ah yes, yes, you can nationalize state corps! That will forbid any enterprise from acquiring them, even if don't have the CEO block active. There's a limit on how many national corps you can have though... 20, isn't it?