Word: bendixes
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Just why mega-companies like Bendix insist on embarking on such excursions of sound and fury that, of course, signify nothing comprises a small mystery. Clearly, diminished federal regulation plays a part. Yet in the case of Bendix, Agee must have known that his gamble would meet with strong resistance--from Marietta...
PITY POOR William M. Agee. The brash, 44-year-old chairman of Bendix Corp. thought he had wrapped up one of the biggest business deals of all time last month when Bendix made a hefty $1.5 billion bid for the promising Martin Marietta Corp. But Marietta fought the unfriendly bid, other industrial giants stepped into the fray, and in the end the tables were turned on Agee A third company, Allied Corp., bought Bendix last Friday, turning Agee from conqueror to conquered in the space of a month...
...bloody Bendix-Marietta saga should dispel any sanguine impressions. The two giants slugged it out toe-to-toe for 31 days, and the well-publicized battle, "at various times...threatened to destroy Marietta or Bendix, or both," according to The New York Times. At one point in late August, it looked like each would succeed only in buying each other's shares, a kind of corporate analog to the mutually fatal duel of Hamlet and Laertes. The two companies--and a pair of other preying conglomerates--spent millions of dollars on legal and financial fees, while diverting the financial community...
...intervention of Allied Corp. did disentangle the mess a bit, but for Bendix and Marietta the end of the match marked a pyrrhic victory at best. Agee's Bendix had become somebody else's property, and Marietta had lost a month's time and resources while surrendering much of its stock to third parties. The only winners, it seems, were the speculators fortunate enough to have their transactions fall on the right side of the two companies' stock caprices...
...matter what happens now, Agee will come out of the takeover battle a wealthy man. If either bid for his company goes through, the Bendix stock that Agee holds will be worth at least $1 million. In addition, Bendix's board of directors voted last week to give the firm's top 16 executives so-called golden-parachute contracts. In Agee's case, this action guarantees him severance pay of about $4 million if he is fired by new management...