tail swallowing

tail swallowing
 n.— «More than two million HBOS shareholders will soon have to make a decision about whether they might be throwing good money after bad if they subscribe to the bank’s £4bn rights issue.…If you do not have enough money to subscribe to the rights issue, you are basically confined to either selling the rights yourself or having the company do so. However, you could sell enough of your nil paid rights to pay for the rights on the remaining allocation in a process known as “tail swallowing.” Tail swallowing allows you to take up a proportion of the rights, but without putting any extra cash in.» —“Millions of investors must decide soon over HBOS, RBS and B&B rights issues” by Myra Butterworth Telegraph (United Kingdom) May 13, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Join the discussion

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Punny Names From 1916

In 1916, a small-town newspaper in Pennsylvania printed a fanciful item about a local gathering with a guest list that included, among others, Miss Ella Vader, Mr. Ray Zor, and other punny names. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...

This Baby Can Turn on a Dime and Get Nine Cents Back

The expression to turn on a dime means “to change quickly.” Early on the phrase referred to horses or horse-drawn vehicles and later to motorized ones, and suggested the idea of changing direction quickly and easily without needing a large turning...