ringfencing
n.— «Hoping to inoculate its unregulated businesses from the utility’s financial misery, PG&E split up its corporate family into distinct entities using a complicated technique known as “ringfencing.” The approach made it difficult to seize the assets of other PG&E subsidiaries to pay the bills of the destitute utility.» —“Federal appeals court revives $4.6 billion claim against PG&E” by Michael Liedtke in San Francisco Mercury News (San Jose, California) Jan. 10, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...