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
Mindy from Crescent, Iowa, grew up hearing about Herman, the son of her mother’s fearsome great aunt Julia, referred to as the woods colt. That phrase is a euphemism for “a child born out of wedlock.” Mindy’s mother said there was a man thought to...
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