Word: merger
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...however, Wall Street in the '90s has lived up to the decade's reputation for grownup -- some call it downright uninspired -- behavior. Most '90s deals have been friendly strategic mergers in which the buyers use stock instead of debt and the partners exchange handshakes instead of lawsuits. Typical was last week's $4 billion agreement for financial conglomerate Primerica to acquire the 73% 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...
...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 one of a kind...
...also that extra-rational accumulation of wishful hunches and adrenal instinct that makes people finally just go for it. Since show-business executives are uncommonly sensitive to go-for-it twitches, it would have been weird if a competing bidder had not stepped in to turn the friendly merger of Paramount Communications and Viacom into the high-strung, insanely complicated struggle it became last week...
...Mortal Kombat, one of the hottest (and most violent) games ever made. In the next few weeks, Disney/MGM will release the game version of Aladdin; Propaganda Films will debut Voyeur, a new kind of adult-oriented interactive movie; and a start-up company named 3DO will launch the riskiest merger of games and multimedia yet, with a $699 superpowered machine designed to blast the market into new levels of graphic reality and financial risk...
...hold 70% of the voting stock of the combined company, he would have majority control of more movies, books and television shows than any other media mogul--unless Ted Turner, Barry Diller or one of the other rival suitors now circling the Paramount building comes forward and derails the merger...