"walk-away money"

[Victor Steinbok]

I usually see the first one, but not the second. The first is sometimes
used to describe a settlement in a nuisance suit or an amount promised
to be either paid or refunded in case a proposed merger or acquisition
falls apart. E.g., T-Mobile got guaranteed cash infusion upfront from
the attempted merger with AT&T, but AT&T got some walk-away money when
the regulators killed the merger.

The second sense DG proposes sounds to me like "acceptable losses".
Given this perfectly adequate terminology, I can't imagine frequent use
of the alternative.

     VS-)

On 11/23/2013 1:22 PM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
> I see two meanings in active use. Which one, to you, is transparent?
>
> I see it refer to money you take to walk away; I also see it as money you
> leave on the table -- you walk away from -- in a sales context.
>
> DanG
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 10:50 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> "Walk-away money" -- transparent in meaning, but I don't see
>> "walk-away" (presumably an attributive?) in this sense in the
>> OED.  It's not included in "walk-away  n." under "walk, v."
>>
>> Presumably akin to "walk-off" (as in baseball), which has been
>> discussed recently.  Looking in the OED, I don't see the baseball
>> sense (can't remember whether that's been discussed).
>>
>> Googling Web and Books for "walk-away money", I see only this before 2001:
>> [PDF]  (026-037)PMM Employees 9/25/00 11:20 AM Page 26
>>
>> https://tice.agroparistech.fr/coursenligne/courses/SOCIOLOGIEETMANAGEME/document/mergers%20and%20acquisition/Peopleprobleminmergers2000McKinsey.pdf?cidReq=SOCIOLOGIEETMANAGEME
>> The most important factor to consider when you are trying to retain
>> and motivate people is how much "walk-away" money they receive from the
>> merger.
>>
>> I have not tried to find "walk-away" in the same sense but not with
>> "money".  There is the usual problem of hyphen = space.
>>
>> Joel

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