I believe it is this: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/warrant.asp So an option, but one provided by the original company.
Lawson Software To Acquire Healthvision for $160 Million
Lawson Software announced this afternoon that it will acquire integration vendor Healthvision and its parent company, Quovadx Holdings, Inc. for $160 million. The all-cash transaction is expected to close later this month.
Lawson said it expects to use Healthvision’s Cloverleaf technology, used in 33% of North American hospitals, to connect multiple source systems and help providers comply with interoperability requirements. Healthvision also offers a Health Information Exchange platform and MediSuite, a clinical applications suite marketed in Canada.
HIStalk contact Thomas Servo reported on December 11 that Healthvision’s owner, Battery Ventures, would announce a sale of the company around New Year’s.
Based on this info in HISTalk (http://histalk.blog-city.com/news_111607.htm) Battery Ventures made quite a profit.
Battery did the following: spent $136.7MM on Quovadx (QVDX) for the Cloverleaf asset, Rogue Wave, and cash from CareScience, $49.5MM on Medisolutions for the Canadian assets, and $7.42MM on Healthvision’s debt and URL – for combined expenditure of appx $193.62MM for what became the Healthvision entity (unless there were other investments unknown to me) – at the time of the QVDX transaction Battery spun off Rogue Wave as a seperate portfolio company and still own that (potentially valuable) asset – and now they have sold the ‘umbrella’ org for $160MM for a net of minus $33.62MM plus Rogue Wave (unknown value)