Word.ws English Dictionary

schmuck insurance

schmuck insurance noun: the situation where an owner sells a company but retains a portion in case the price appreciates in the future.

Noun

schmuck insurance (uncountable)

  1. (informal) The situation where an owner sells a company but retains a portion in case the price appreciates in the future.
    • The solution? Instead of selling 100% of the business, the seller either keeps a stake, or keeps an option to buy back part of it later. This solution, which was apparently popularized by Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons in the early 2000s ($, WSJ), is known as "schmuck insurance”.2023 April 5, Byrne Hobart, Capital Gains
    • In Wall Street parlance this is known as "schmuck insurance," a reference to the rather vulgar Yiddish word that has come to mean the equivalent of "idiot."2011 June 13, Shira Ovide, “The Benefits of Deal 'Schmuck Insurance'”, in The Wall Street Journal

Origin of schmuck insurance

From schmuck (“fool, idiot”) + insurance.

Questions about schmuck insurance

What does schmuck insurance mean?
Schmuck insurance means the situation where an owner sells a company but retains a portion in case the price appreciates in the future.
What part of speech is schmuck insurance?
Schmuck insurance is a noun.

Words near schmuck insurance in the dictionary

  1. Schmoyer
  2. Schmoyers
  3. schmozzle
  4. schmozzles
  5. schmuck
  6. schmuck insurance
  7. schmucked
  8. Schmucker
  9. Schmuckers
  10. schmuckiness
  11. schmucking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: schmuck insurance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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