Word: rjr
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many Wall Street insiders thought the KKR bid was as self-serving and hasty as Johnson's offer had been. "They broke the golden rule by injecting their egos into a business decision," said one financier who knows KKR well. "They went after RJR Nabisco to protect their franchise as the largest dealmaker...
...Denver oil billionaire. First Boston also wooed Harry Gray, the retired chairman of United Technologies, and several other high- rolling investors. The group came into the bidding with a show-stopping but tentative offer of cash and securities worth up to $26.8 billion, or $118 a share, for RJR stock that traded for $56 a share in mid-October...
...billion, or $100 a share, while KKR had proposed a package worth $21.6 billion, or $94 a share. Board members extended the deadline until Tuesday, Nov. 29, to take any counteroffers and allow time to study each proposal. If none is accepted, the directors could supervise an RJR restructuring themselves...
...RJR Nabisco, the benefits of LBOs were hardly lost on Johnson. Born in Winnipeg, Man., he had parlayed a keen eye for a deal and the nerves of a gunslinger into the top job at three major corporations. He was president of Standard Brands, the producer of Planters nuts and Baby Ruth candy bars, when it merged with Nabisco in 1981. Four years later, as Nabisco's president, Johnson sold out to RJR Reynolds for $4.9 billion and soon became president of the merged company. After adding the title of chief executive officer in 1987, he swiftly moved RJR Nabisco...
Amid the brawl for his company, Johnson has remained aloof from most outsiders and workers at RJR Nabisco headquarters in the elegant Galleria complex north of Atlanta. "We don't know what is going on," says an employee. "Some of us are going to lose our jobs, but we don't know who, or where." Feelings of helplessness were hardly confined to the South. Said a 15-year employee at an RJR Nabisco cookie plant in Fair Lawn, N.J.: "When you're at the bottom of the ladder and you got money men at the top, you take...