Word: buyouts
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...stunning rebuff to Johnson, the board awarded the food-and-tobacco giant to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the leveraged-buyout specialists. Underdog KKR won even though the firm's final bid of about $25 billion in cash and securities, or $109 a share, was a bit less than the $25.4 billion, or $112 a share, that Johnson and his handful of top RJR managers had offered as their last stab. (The largest previous deal was Chevron's $13.3 billion takeover of Gulf in 1984.) "It was destined to happen this way," said a source close to the bidding. "The board could...
BUSINESS: The buyout barons win RJR Nabisco...
CAPTION: A Leveraged Buyout in Action...
Even so, the results underscored a common criticism of the motives for buyouts. Richard Thevenet, vice president of Stern Stewart & Co., a Manhattan- based management efficiency consultant, put it bluntly: "Managers have an incentive to underperform before a buyout. Records of dramatic turnarounds after an LBO raise a troubling question. Why were these managers unable to accomplish these feats before the LBO? Shareholders bear all the costs, but not the rewards of the turnaround...
HENRY KRAVIS. With his reputation as the No. 1 leveraged-buyout specialist on the line, he was not about to let RJR Nabisco go private unless he consummated the deal. A founding partner in the buyout firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Manhattan socialite, 44, countered Johnson's proposal by offering to pay as much as $21.6 billion for the Atlanta-based company. As RJR's new owner, Kravis, whose firm also controls Beatrice and Safeway Stores, would probably keep the food divisions and sell the tobacco business...