Word: rjr
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...helped that HBO had a very good book (the 1990 best seller Barbarians at the Gate, by Wall Street Journal reporters Bryan Burrough and John Helyar) and a very big leveraged buyout (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts' epic $25 billion takeover of RJR Nabisco in 1988) to work with. And the $7 million HBO earmarked for the project probably came in handy too. The film remains reasonably faithful to the spirit of the book, while vastly simplifying the plot. Whereas Burrough and Helyar recount a story that involves dozens of rapacious financiers, greedy executives, odious publicists, duplicitous bankers and devious attorneys...
...refresh all our memories, let's recall that the whole RJR fiasco got started when a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking, foul-mouthed Canadian expatriate named F. Ross Johnson, who for some inexplicable reason found himself running the 19th largest industrial company in the U.S., decided to take the food and tobacco colossus private in a leveraged buyout...
...liked but not especially effective CEO of American Express, and Peter Cohen, the not-so-well-liked and not-at-all-effective chairman and CEO of Amex's subsidiary, Shearson Lehman Hutton. The triumvirate offered stockholders a bid of $75 a share, which added up to billions less than RJR was worth, making it quite a steal. Worse, the deal left Johnson in control and allowed him a package under which he and his pals could haul in as much as $2.5 billion. Yes, billion...
SMOKING? OR NONSMOKING? PEOPLE ARE OFFERED such a choice by restaurants and airlines. But now investors will be able to choose under a novel stock plan devised by tobacco and food giant RJR Nabisco. As part of a deal to raise $1.5 billion to reduce its $14 billion debt, RJR Nabisco will create two new classes of stock: RN-Reynolds, which will mainly represent the company's tobacco business, and RN-Nabisco, a proxy for the firm's food operations. RJR Nabisco is the nation's largest cookiemaker and the second biggest cigarette manufacturer...
Stock analysts applauded the plan because it will allow the two parts of RJR to be valued for their individual worth. And since some investment funds have been barred from holding RJR shares for ethical reasons, the deal would attract new investors...