Part of the defense called for Morgan and other, unidentified banks to refuse to lend money for an unfriendly bid for Time.

Greenmail is the practice of buying stock back for more than the market price to fight off an unfriendly bid.

The result was passage of the legislation, which would require management approval for most mergers, dooming unfriendly bids.

Nations that permit unfriendly bids are angry at others, most notably West Germany and Switzerland, where they are virtually verboten.

But the Bass Group, which owns about 10 percent of Macmillan, has not been known to make unfriendly bids.

One former agency executive said an unfriendly $46-a-share bid would come today from WPP Group, a publicly held British advertising company.

The situation is fairly complex, particularly because the West Point bid is an unfriendly bid.

"It just has never been the case that an industry player would make an unfriendly bid for another industry player."

Last August, Macmillan's board adopted a "poison pill" provision to fend off unfriendly bids.

The recent unfriendly bids appear to be aberrations, not part of a larger revival of hostile takeovers.