Four days later, Oracle started a $5.1 billion hostile-takeover bid for PeopleSoft that has since been raised to $6.3 billion in cash.

"If he is really serious about buying the company, why not start a bid?"

By 2001, Ms. Claxton was starting a second bid, this one successful, for a Peekskill City Council seat.

Mr. Obama also this week started a bid for his party's presidential nomination.

In September 2007, Biggleswade United started a bid to become the first English football team to be managed by collective membership via their website.

But analysts said they doubted that Paramount was about to start a bid, particularly against a company that might resist.

In 1996, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) started a bid to replace the royal parliamentary system with a people's socialist republic by violent means.

But the news does not necessarily make it any more likely that SunTrust will start a competing bid, especially since banks have traditionally been reluctant to pursue hostile takeovers.

Last week, Mesa Air said that it was starting a hostile bid to take over Atlantic Coast by asking shareholders to replace Atlantic Coast's board.

On Friday, they were barred by Spanish market regulators from starting such a bid for at least six months.