Word: rjr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fresh burst of takeover cross fire rattled through corporate boardrooms last week as acquirers battled for control of companies that make everything from bath towels (West Point Pepperell) to cake mixes (Pillsbury). Costliest of all was the struggle for RJR Nabisco (1987 revenues: $16 billion), whose price tag set a record with each new offer. Top RJR Nabisco executives, backed by Wall Street's Shearson Lehman Hutton and Salomon Brothers, raised their bid from $17.6 billion to $21 billion, topping the rival offer of $20.6 billion from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the high-flying leveraged-buyout firm. Now the two sides...
Arriving at RJR's Manhattan offices about 1:15 a.m., Roberts flinched at the sight of Cohen puffing away on his ever present cigar and asked sarcastically if RJR, which sells some 290 billion cigarettes a year, also made cigars. Roberts, who moved to a seat across the room, seriously misjudged his audience. The last thing the embattled RJR team wanted to hear at that hour was another antismoking crack, especially from a would-be ally...
...week's end KKR had the highest offer on the table, but the Shearson team was preparing a new bid. Ultimately, RJR Nabisco's board of directors, which includes such outsiders as Charles Hugel, president of Combustion Engineering and Martin Davis, chairman of Gulf & Western, will probably have the final say on who, if anyone, buys the company. Some Wall Streeters think the financing will prove so difficult that KKR and Shearson will have to work together. In a conciliatory move on Friday, KKR said it would not press for selling off the tobacco division...
...billion bid for RJR Nabisco, is any company safe from the buyout binge...
Leveraged buyouts come in many different varieties. In some cases, corporate raiders snap up a company with borrowed money, then throw out the management, dismember the firm and sell off the pieces. But in other deals, including the proposed buyout of RJR Nabisco, the managers initiate the action. In one of the least controversial types of management buyouts, the executives of a particular division buy it from a larger parent company. These managers are out to prove they can run their own show -- and run it better than some sprawling conglomerate that has grown inattentive or slothlike in responding...