Word: 80s
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What do a couple of big private universities have in common with the "white collar" crimes of overleveraged corporate conglomerates of the '80s? True, the decade of corporate excess left even the academic world tainted--from the president of Stanford University, who "appropriated" federal grants for home improvements, to the Yale president who decided to forego his comfortable (albeit quasi-academic) appointment to go into business in a completely forprofit "educational" enterprise. Still, it seems odd that the government should focus its antitrust wrath on MIT and eight Ivy League schools...
...that it does not already own of Travelers, the insurance company. So too were AT&T's $12.6 billion deal for McCaw Cellular in August and the $6 billion merger agreement between drug firms Merck and Medco last July. "These deals are boring," says a disgruntled veteran of the '80s. "Today, you actually have to sell the stuff on the fundamentals" -- how well companies fit together...
However the Paramount fight plays out, Wall Street dealmakers don't expect a re-enactment of '80s-style takeover frenzy anytime soon. Debt remains a dirty word in many executive suites, and intense foreign competition has put pressure on companies to merge in ways that make sense for their long-term abilities to expand. "Nobody does a deal for what they used to call financial reasons any longer," says arbitrager Kalin. "The merger has got to fit in with your company." While the Paramount battle is happily reminiscent of the '80s, she adds, it will probably prove to be just...
...most part, they are not members of some grand conspiracy sponsored by a state apparatus, but loosely organized, grass- roots militants who use similar terrorist methods and get money and weapons from the same like-minded sources. Unlike the Palestinian and Shi'ite revolutionaries of the 1970s and '80s, these disparate cells of angry young men seem to boil up from the broad opposition growing in the largely undemocratic countries of the region, in a self-proclaimed war to force pure, undiluted Islamic law on the societies that have failed them. When that violence spills over into...
BUSINESS: Are the '80s Back...