The term "corporate raider" was a position a board took before it had heard the argument. It retired the word. It did not retire the practice.

The companies that got raided in the 1980s had been building the problem for two decades. The word designed to end that argument is the reason most people never heard it.

Corporate raiding ran on borrowed money, and the man who supplied most of it went to prison. Here is the era, the deals, and the indictment that ended it.

The term exists to discredit before the argument starts. Here's what's actually happening when a corporate raider shows up.