Are Corporations Becoming Pushovers in Merger Mania?

Beginning of article

NEW YORK -- Hostile takeovers have lost their stigma. Investment bankers pitch deals worth billions of dollars, and nobody blinks. Companies bathed in history like McDonnell Douglas and MCI have agreed to be bought out.

In that light, Hilton's $6.5 billion play for ITT Corp. shouldn't be much of a surprise. The rules have changed: It's eat or be eaten.

Back in the 1980s, when terms like "corporate raiders" and "leveraged buyout" entered the common lexicon, aggression was mostly a trait of the takeover artists, swashbucklers like Icahn, Goldsmith, Pickens. Corporations rarely pursued takeovers with the zeal they exhibit today, perhaps because they were too busy …