> I had to learn this in college, many years ago.

I majored in Computer Science and Physics. Which of these disciplines would mergers and acquisitions have been in? Should my algorithms class taught us about diluted stock and RSUs vs ISOs? Does my quantum mechanics professor have a unit on hostile takeovers?

I guess that'd be astrophysics: Two large piles of money circling each other, causing distant ripples on the stock market.

I took a microeconomics course and a macroeconomics course in college. Mergers/acquisitions may have been mentioned briefly, but they weren't a point of study. Microeconomics focused on why individual entities make decisions, and macroeconomics covered stuff like why we have currency, why is inflation useful and how the Fed manages it, etc.

In my decade on HN I've seen a lot about funding, IPOs, and acquisitions of private companies, but very little about hostile takeover of public companies.

Where are you expecting people to have developed an incidental background knowledge on deploying / overcoming poison pills?

We all have different backgrounds and different interests, you know.

Maybe you can share your knowledge, so those of us who are not dealing with mergers/acquisitions/takeovers can learn something?

You'd be surprised how many people active in the M&A market don't know. For instance, I regularly get glazed over eyes when I ask parties to sign a letter of non-reliance.

Hostile takeovers were much more common in the past as well.