By 1980, Gulf exhibited many of the characteristics of a giant corporation that had lost its way. It had a huge but poorly performing asset portfolio, associated with a depressed share price. The stock market value of Gulf started to drop below the break-up value of its assets. Such a situation was bound to attract the interest of corporate raiders, although a corporation in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 was in the early 1980s thought immune to takeover risk.