Word: knockouts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Imagine if two battling behemoths like King Kong and Godzilla decided to join forces. Talk about a knockout combination. That's how the entertainment industry reacted last week to the disclosure that Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial, the world's largest maker of consumer electronics, is negotiating to buy MCA, the American show-business giant, in a deal that could be worth more than $7 billion. The acquisition would represent an even more titanic version of the hardware-meets-software combination pioneered by Matsushita's rival Sony, which bought CBS Records for $2 billion in 1988 and Columbia Pictures...
...Warren Beatty, Hollywood's most distinctive producer- star, scores after a long dry spell with a gangland drama of wit and grace, narrative sweep and unique visual style. All this and Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman (strutting their roguish stuff while devil-dolled up in grotesque makeup) and a knockout Madonna too. It may not be a great movie -- after all, it's only comic-book art -- but it's great moviemaking...
Canny corporate raiders know there is more than one way to fell an obstinate opponent. Throughout the 1980s the knockout blow was typically delivered in a high-stakes takeover battle, with much fancy legal footwork and powerhouse debt financing. But in recent months the collapse of the junk-bond market and the passage of anti-takeover laws in more than 30 states have forced a switch in tactics. Now the savviest challengers are clambering back into the ring with an old-fashioned approach to kayoing corporate management. The new arena: the annual stockholders' meeting. The main event: the proxy fight...
...battleground in Panama, however, a far less optimistic drama was unfolding. Confounding Pentagon hopes that Noriega's Panama Defense Forces would quickly crumble under a devastating U.S. onslaught, the fugitive dictator's men were preparing a determined counterattack. Instead of the quick and decisive knockout U.S. commanders had sought, the invasion was in danger of degenerating into a nasty street fight in densely populated Panama City. House-to-house fighting in a crowded urban area was something military planners were leery of because of the threat to civilians...