What is a corporate takeover?

It all has to due with on hand cash reserves and the ability to fight off a take over. Any company can be the target of a take over. A small company can take over a larger company,or Vis-Versa. A company that is traded has rules of operation, There is a board of directors, stock holders, employees, middle and upper management, stocks recievables and chargeoffs. If you want to take over a company you have to get into there overall bussiness in great detail. There are many ways to take over a company. And there are many players in a take over.
In the example you posted lets say Midwest Airlines has a contract for a charter every day to New York. And that contract is worth 50 million in one year and yeilds a profit of 15 million to the Midwest. Lets say they also are making 10 million on other services after expences that would put them making 25 million a year. Now South West is another air charter service in the same area of operations and they need newer plans and Midwest has newer planes and has a estblished rought that is working the planes only part time. South West could buy two new aircraft and wait 2 years for them or they could take over Midwest. If they will start buying midwest stocks in the background and keep it quite. At the end of a month they will own the controlling stock of Midwest Airlines. This would be a proxy vote sell. Midwest can only avoid this by controlling it shares and owning more then half the outstanding voting shears. If South West is wise it will actually own 6 blocks of interest in South West via 6 different stock pools and each can demand a voice on the board of Midwest ( that is the easy way ). Then the vote is fixed. They vote in a new president and then sell off the company for next to nothing.
A offer can be posted and as South West has a proxy vote of over 50 percent of the company it can cause a sale by vote. Or they Midwest gets other large block stockl holders to work with them and devalue the stock of midwest and buyup all the lose shares at a discount. This draws down the cast reserves of Midwest and makes them ripe for take over. After they draw down the reserves they file suit for controll of the company and controll of the board.
Like is said there are many ways to do a take over.
If i was going to take over a company, I would run a full course on devalueing there stocks and buying it up cheap. At the same time I would buy there existing contracts outright for leverage. Then i would buy controlling shares in there main material suppliers and take a seat on the board of that company. I would buy stocks or have some one buy stocks in all the companies they do bussiness with so i could get the reports on how much they are owed from Midwest. Then i would buy there outstanding bank notes. After doing all this i would demand a seat on the board. Then i would call the outstanding bank notes. They would have to draw down their cash reserve. Then i would have the material suppliers also start calling for payments of the owed money. Then i would make a cast tender over for the control of the company and i would be dumping stocks left and right causing the company to bleed to death almost. Then i would pick up the pieces and sell off the assets.
War is hell you have to have the right goal in mind in doing a corporate take over. They are not pretty people lose there jobs and people get hurt. So i do not work them.